


Chaos Reigns

by NimbusLlewelyn



Series: Child of the Storm Verse [2]
Category: DC (Comics), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher, X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: BAMF Harry Dresden, BAMF Wanda Maximoff, Demons, Explosions, F/M, Harry Dresden Is A Dork, Karrin Murphy is a Badass, Magic Detectives, Rare Pairings, Teenage Bruce Wayne Should Be Supervised At All Times, The Totally Not Batmobile, Young Bruce Wayne, who you gonna call?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:34:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 25,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24116611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NimbusLlewelyn/pseuds/NimbusLlewelyn
Summary: A twoshot spinoff of 'Child of the Storm', set during chapters 58 to 60. The Avengers are on holiday. SHIELD are busy fighting HYDRA. Who you gonna call? If you're Wanda Maximoff, heir apparent to the Sorcerer Supreme, in Chicago to deal with a major demon problem, the answer is Harry Dresden. The two of them aren't going to have much in the way of help. But that's okay. It's only the world at stake, after all.
Relationships: Harry Dresden/Wanda Maximoff
Series: Child of the Storm Verse [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/60048
Comments: 2
Kudos: 21
Collections: Harry Potter Crossovers





	1. When Harry Met Wanda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was a story I really had fun writing - Wanda and Dresden sparked off each other really well, the whole cast did. Thomas and Murphy are fun side-snarkers, and young Bruce is entertainingly mad. The pairing was, if anything, the first sign that my characters don't care about my plans, they're just up for doing their own thing. Not that I mind; it turned out great.

When I walked into Mac's, I was hit by a wave of comforting warmth. I savoured it. Normally, Chicago has warmed up by Easter, but not always. There was a definite chill in the air, and the wind had been biting.

Also, my car had broken down. Again.

The Blue Beetle is a noble machine, but even with Mike, my miracle performing mechanic at work; it still breaks down with painful regularity. So, I had to walk.

I'd been called to Mac's by a new client, who had specifically mentioned 'Accorded Neutral Territory'. This meant two things. First, she – and based on the voice, I was dealing with a she – was familiar with the supernatural scene. Very few people outside of it know about Mac's, to the point where I half suspect that Mac's got wards to discourage ordinary people from noticing his tavern. Second, she was wary, whether it was of me or the reason she was calling on my services. Or even both.

This, needless to say, both intrigued me and put me on my guard. After Paris, I had gone out, mystically speaking, armed to the teeth, staff in hand, blasting rod hanging just inside my coat. My hand cannon was in my pocket, fully loaded, along with six of those speed loader things that Murphy had been going on at me to get. Actually dying, however briefly, tends to change your outlook a bit.

While they wouldn't be of much use against the _veidrdraugar_ unless I got a clean head shot, which since they hunt in packs probably wouldn't help me much, I had also asked SHIELD for a handgun version of their 'Deity class' submachine guns. It had been more in hope than expectation, as I severely doubted that SHIELD would be particularly eager to hand out a pocket sized WMD to a civilian, but Coulson must have pulled some strings, because apparently one was on order. That or Gemma was building one for me.

My old, damaged shield bracelet had also been discarded, in favour of one I'd been working on ever since I'd got over my pyrophobia. It would stop just about anything, including heat, a function which I had tested exhaustively. This meant that it required more power, but I found that I preferred getting tired to getting dead.

Leaving all that aside, I was also wearing my enchanted leather duster, which is tougher than any body armour on the market, though some of SHIELD's newer gear might give it a run for its money, and working on new versions of my force ring. Lots of them.

I scanned the room, looking for likely candidates for my client, and was very surprised to Murphy. She was sitting at a table with a woman who was dressed in dark red. A… well, I had to call a spade a spade: an absolutely drop dead gorgeous woman. For a moment, I stared at her, jaw hanging loose, before I cranked it shut and studied her.

She had chestnut brown hair that existed on the edge between curly and wavy, intelligent eyes the colour of new grass and strong, clean cut and ever so slightly elfin bone structure that was only accentuated by her full lips.

Her clothing was fairly interesting too, if only for the fact that it accented her shapely figure. An unzipped ox blood leather coat on top of a cream button down shirt accounted for her upper body, while intriguingly tight red jeans and a pair of black pumps accounted for her lower body.

Examination done, I tried not to stare. While she was an awfully attractive woman, and I hadn't… well, had a girlfriend, for a good couple of years now, not only was it impolite, awfully attractive women tend to set off my alarm bells.

Why? Because extremely good looks are stock in trade for a number of supernatural predators and a fair number of mundane ones, both male and female – though resisting the charms of the former tends to be less of a problem for me. As a culture, we're trained to believe that good looks equal a good person.

Take it from me, they really, really don't.

That isn't to say that pretty people are evil. My brother, Thomas, is very pretty, being a vampire of the White Court, and he's one of the most decent people that I know. Of course, he's also an irritating little shit sometimes, but that's because he's my brother and doesn't specifically pertain to his placing on the Jedi-Sith index. Murphy's certainly pretty, and she's as good a person as I've ever known, though she's one hell of a lot more than that.

And part of the one hell of a lot more is possessing good instincts. Murphy's usually a good judge of when someone's on the level. Usually. Not always. I have the chipped tooth to prove it.

Anyway. What I'm saying is that when I went over, Accorded Neutral Territory or not, I was wary. This wariness was slightly tempered, however, by the conversation I overheard.

"… and it took me _years_ to get respect from all the mystic brotherhoods. I mean, these are guys who get a migraine if they try to light a _candle_ , and the only thing about me that persuaded them to pay attention was the fact that I was young and attractive," the woman was saying, rolling her eyes.

I could empathise with what she was saying. While the White Council itself is a relatively liberal organisation in terms of gender relations, since there is no power difference between men and women, the various allies and hangers on, the Venatori (Masons with added machine guns) and the like weren't always so enlightened, particularly the older members.

I could relate. While I didn't have the problem of being taken seriously, I _did_ have the problem of everyone thinking that I was a ticking time bomb of warlocky evil.

"Hey," I said, being a suave and charming type. "Room for one more?"

Murphy looked up at me and smiled, as did the other woman, though her eyes flicked up and down my body, assessing me.

No, alas, not like that.

"Hey Harry," Murphy said. "Wanda, this is Harry. Harry, Wanda."

I reached and shook the woman's hand. She was tall for a woman, I noticed, and had a strong grip.

Then, it clicked.

And I did something truly shameful.

OoOoO

"You squeed."

"I did not."

Murphy's expression could only be described as gleeful. "You went into fangirl mode."

"I did not," I protested.

"That sounded like a squee to me," Wanda Maximoff, a.k.a. the Scarlet Witch, said, smirking and sipping her beer. "Don't worry. I get that a lot."

I would like to set the record straight here. I glowered in a manly fashion. I did not sulk. No matter what Murphy says, I did not sulk. Or pout. I am a wizard and such things are beneath me.

"He's sulking."

"I know. It's kind of cute on him, isn't it?" Wanda said, a wicked twinkle in her eye.

Murphy went ever so slightly pink. "A little."

Wanda looked between the two of us with the slight, amused smile that was, according to Ebenezar, her mentor's trademark. Well, his exact words had been somewhat blunter and less complimentary. The most printable phrase was 'smug bastard'.

While Ebenezar has never been a fan of the White Council's proclivity for internal politics and very much approved of Strange's famous challenge, he's not fond of people acting like they know everything, which, apparently Strange usually does. By which I mean, he usually seems to know everything and almost invariably acts like it. Personally, I rather like the idea of someone asking Council's collective geriatric ass if it's feeling lucky, and I consider being irritating to be a much underrated art form, so I'm less bothered by the idea.

"I'll go and get another beer for Mister Dresden," she said. I began to rise and voice a protest, but she waved it away. "You had to walk down here in the freezing cold because of me. The least I can do is go and get you a drink. Karrin, could you please fill him in on why I'm here?"

"Of course," Murphy said.

"Thanks," Wanda said, and made her way up to the bar. I stared after her, faintly creeped out.

"How did she know that the Beetle was dead?" I asked, slightly worried.

"I told her," Murphy said dryly.

Well, that was rather less eldritch than expected and it raised Wanda's stock in my personal estimation. While she was a legend, there is a reason for the maxim 'never meet your heroes'. They never live up to expectations, and do you know why? It's because they're people. And even the best people screw up massively every now and then.

The reason this mundane answer impressed me was because it's very easy, when you're wielding a fundamental force of the universe and channelling cosmic energies, to lose perspective, to turn to magic to answer all your questions and solve all your problems. And, to an extent, it can. But there's a price. There's always a price. And there's something to be said for the simple solution.

Murphy coughed, drawing me out of my reverie. I started slightly, remembering that Murphy was going to full me in and gave her an expectant look. In response, I got a pair of raised eyebrows that spoke volumes, then she explained.

"Wanda wants her help to stop some demons," she said. "Called something I can't pronounce. Apparently they've been popping up all over the world, sometimes along with another bunch called the Mindless Ones."

I blinked owlishly. "Well, that search won't take long."

"It won't?"

"Yeah. I'll just ring up Billy and ask him where Chicago's biggest frat is."

I heard a warm, pleasant chuckle behind me.

Laughter's important. It's something that many of us don't think about, but the way someone laughs is important. There's even a kind of fear demon that's common in Europe which can be hurt, even destroyed, by human laughter. I think it's called a Boggart.

Laughter can warm your heart and make you smile. It can raise the hairs on the back of your neck and set your every nerve on edge. And it can cut you to the bone and make you feel like the smallest most pathetic excuse for a human in the whole world.

I usually hear examples two and three. Number two usually comes from many of the assorted nasties I face, when they're in full on supervillain note. No matter how human they look, or sound, there's usually an undercurrent, a niggling sense of something _wrong._

Number three comes in every now and then, when someone feels like being cruel. Children do it, because they don't know better. Adults do it because they want to put someone down. I've heard it in playgrounds and police stations, and it never gets any better, even if it's not directed at you. You just learn to cover up the hurt better. Believe me, I know. Prior to the Battle of New York which made humanity start to believe again, I got a lot of it. Advertising yourself to be a wizard in a world that thinks that it knows everything is asking for trouble.

Some Wizards have speculated that human laughter contains a tone that we instinctively recognise and it sets us at ease, the same tone which kills Boggarts, which is why it sets us on edge when we hear something inhuman laugh. Try it yourself – and I don't mean track down your nearest vampire or troll and start tickling. That is a very good way to end up very dead.

No, instead I would suggest that you look up an audio clip of a hyena's laughter. Listen to it. Just listen. And I guarantee that your hairs will be rising on the back of your neck, because your instincts know, they just _know_ , that something is not right here.

I don't usually hear the first kind of laugh. It can come in many forms. You have the high, piping laughter of a happy child, the indulgent laughter of a parent or the easy laughter of someone whose company you're perfectly comfortable in, whether that person is your friend, your family or your lover. I could list them all day, and I'd still not be done.

Laughter is one of the things that the real monsters can't copy or take away. They can only give the world a twisted, fun house mirror version of it. Laughter can hurt, yes. But it can also heal. It can bring a little bit of warmth, light and joy into the world.

Laughter is important. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Wanda's laugh was that kind of laugh. It was a laugh that made you smile and warmed you up a little bit. It was something I could have listened to all day.

"Unfortunately, we're not hunting frat boys, fun as that sounds," she said. "Mindless Ones are a kind of demon. Or, more accurately, a semi-sentient magical construct." She sat down. "And they aren't the main problem."

"What is?" I asked.

"The N'Garai."

I winced. The N'Garai are nasty customers, foot soldiers of the Elder God Chthon, ruled and led by a caste of Generals, Mabdhara, known as the Watchers of the Lost Way. I relayed this to Murphy. Wanda nodded.

"That's a pretty good summary," she said.

"How tough are they?" Murph asked.

"Tough," I said, somewhat unhelpfully. "I'm not sure how, I've never run across them."

"A bit tougher than a Red Court vampire. They're stronger, certainly, but not as fast and certainly not as bright. They're about as smart as the average dog," Wanda said clinically. "Except for the Mabdhara. They're the Generals. Each is about the size of a rubbish truck, weighs in at between eight to ten tons and strong enough to go toe to toe with a powerful Asgardian. They're reasonably smart and have a degree of psychic control over their lesser brethren. They're known as the Watchers of the Lost Way because they're considered to be the heralds of Chthon. That may be because their very presence weakens the boundaries of reality."

I winced again. "Last time I went up against something that powerful, I only got out because your mentor pulled a _Deus Ex Machina_ on my ass," I said.

"Trust me, Gravemoss is a lot worse than one of the Madbhara. And don't worry. I'll handle that side of it," Wanda said calmly, tone suggesting that she'd done it many times before. "What I'm worried about is kicking a hornet's nest, so to speak, and having a couple of dozen N'Garai running around eating people while I'm handling the Mabdhara. And there'll be Mindless Ones too."

"I might be able to manage that," I said, a touch doubtfully. "You said that they were the Heralds of Chthon. That they weaken dimensional barriers." I glanced at Murphy. "Think what Bianca and Mavra were pulling with the Nightmare a few years back."

Murphy grimaced. "Gotcha."

"Yes?" Wanda asked.

"What does it mean if Chthon's already here? Sort of."

"What do you mean, 'sort of'?" Wanda asked. Her voice was carefully measured.

"I looked at one of the _veidrdraugar_ through the Sight under Paris," I said, shivering as the memory played itself back in glorious Technicolor and full Surround Sound. "And… Chthon spoke to me. He shut down my Sight."

Wanda stared at me for a moment, going milk white.

Then she began to swear.

I have never heard so many swear words in my life, let alone ones so exotic and deployed with such vehemence behind them. The tirade got the attention of the entire bar.

I leaned back in my seat, and exchanged a look with Murphy. She looked impressed. I probably looked a little terrified. Wanda Maximoff is not someone to be taken lightly and there isn't much difference, when one really thinks about it, between invective and magic. Both are words with a lot of emotion put behind them that can do a lot of damage, properly applied.

Admittedly, I have yet to see a well applied 'fuck' or 'shit' level a building, but from the (admittedly, rather lovely) mouth of Wanda Maximoff... well. There's a first time for everything.

After a while, she began to repeat herself, and, recognising this, she began to run out of steam, letting out a sigh when she finished. "You're sure," she said. It wasn't a question, but I answered it as such.

"Certain."

She pinched the brow of her nose and sighed. "Dammit. This makes things much more urgent."

"Why?" Murphy asked. "Who's this Chthon guy?"

"Chthon is an Elder God," Wanda said. "Specifically, his domain was Chaos, though he was a dab hand with dark magic too, to the point that some consider him the God of Black Magic too. He was banished from this dimension millions upon millions of years ago. But he left behind the Darkhold. It's a book of dark magic, _the_ book of dark magic, but it's much more than that. It is to Chthon what the One Ring was to Sauron, but infinitely worse. It's sentient, it wants to free him, it's totally indestructible and its very existence outside of its prison is degrading the walls of reality."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that things that look at humanity as toys or lunch can come through much more easily than they would otherwise be able to," Wanda said. "You've dealt with the Fae before?"

"Once," Murphy said slowly. "I think."

"Yeah," I confirmed. "Walmart."

"Oh," Murphy said, and rubbed her knee, glowering at me. "That plan of yours put me out of action for three months, you know." She turned to Wanda. "We were being chased by a plant monster in a Walmart, so his brilliant idea was to throw marbles everywhere. And it was foggy."

Wanda winced. "Knee?"

"Yeah."

"Ouch."

"I said I was sorry," I mumbled.

Murphy rolled her eyes at me, then frowned at Wanda. "You're saying that more like that is coming through?"

"We're probably looking at the entire collection of Grimm's Fairytales and then some," Wanda said. "And that's just the start: Surtur's stirring. Lucifer's testing his bonds. The big guns down below are on the move."

"You mean, the forces of hell," Murphy said flatly.

"Not just one hell," Wanda said. "Every hell. Every two bit dimension lord is looking to get in on the Earth real estate market." She met my gaze briefly. "And if we don't stop them... a few N'Garai running loose won't even register as a blip on the radar."

Some days, I just love my job.

OoOoO

Shortly afterwards, we finished our beers and all piled into Murphy's Saturn. Or, more accurately, I ceded the front seat to Wanda, then folded myself into the kitchen cupboard that Murphy claims is a backseat. I considered the fact that I only fell on my face once, legs waving out the open door like those of an overturned beetle, to be an achievement.

Wanda very kindly didn't laugh, or if she did, hid it well. Murphy, on the other hand, pointed and laughed. At length. In response, I informed her that her car was clearly designed by and for Hobbits. We have that sort of friendship.

The drive from Mac's to my apartment isn't long, so I managed to lever myself out of Murphy's Iron Maiden on wheels in fairly short order, ineffectually shake off pins and needles and let us all in, where we found my apprentice, Bruce Wayne. I'd left him reviewing my notes on some of my more mundane old cases, going through them and making notes on what he would have done differently, while Mouse, my living sofa, sat with him. He'd done this whenever I set Bruce this particular exercise since he was a few weeks old, and I was getting a niggling feeling that the dog was learning to read. He certainly had enough opportunity. I set Bruce this exercise fairly regularly, and it was getting to the point where the two of us knew each other's investigative styles inside out. Plus, I'd been teaching him since he was about eight years old. So his response to being apprised of the situation was entirely predictable.

"Can I come along?" he asked.

I sighed. I was very rarely actually angry with Bruce, and when I was, it was usually because he'd done something stupid and I was worried about him.

Like, for instance, giving his butler/minder, Alfred, the slip and trying to sneak into Undertown, the vast network of tunnels, caverns and sunken buildings under Chicago.

Or trying to whistle up Mab, yes, _that_ Mab, Queen of Air and Darkness, She Who Must Be Obeyed, for a _chat_.

Or trying to get involved in my most recent case, involving SHIELD, the Darkhold and an immortal necromancer called Gravemoss.

As you can probably tell, Bruce usually gets into trouble if left unsupervised. That's usually something of a problem, since even Thomas, an actual freaking _vampire_ , thinks that he moves unnervingly quietly. If you're not looking, he can and will disappear from right under your nose.

The only one who's ever reliably managed to catch him at it is Murphy. No one's sure how she does it. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that she's his martial arts teacher. I've managed to stop him once or twice, as have Michael and Charity, who both seem to have some kind of sixth sense with children, but most of the time, he gets away clean. Alfred complains about it every now and then.

He and I chat every now and then, mostly on the grounds that due to his parents' working hours, we're the ones who do the day to day looking after of Bruce, it's best if we keep each other posted. Truth be told, he's not all that wild on the idea of Bruce coming with me on cases, or, indeed, learning about investigation and the supernatural, but the Undertown incident convinced him that if Bruce didn't do it with me, he'd just go out and do it by himself, and he has more than enough knowledge to get himself into one hell of a lot of trouble.

And that's the trouble with the kid, really. He's brilliant and he devours knowledge. He knows more about magical theory than I did at that age, hell, probably more than I did until relatively recently. But he has a thirst to know more, and that usually overrides his common sense.

On top of that, he has a serious yen for justice, which is often what gets him into one mess or another. He seems to think that his knowledge and his skills will get him out of trouble as fast as they get him into it.

Take it from me. They don't.

Thankfully, he's got better about it recently, but that doesn't change the fact that he's reckless in the extreme.

Stop looking at me like that. I'm not that bad. Any more.

Don't get me wrong, he's a great kid. When push comes to shove, he does do as I or Murph say. He's eager to learn, he knows how to listen (most of the time) and he doesn't complain when a case goes south and he ends up cold and wet or covered in gunk.

He's also a natural PI. He's got a very good eye for detail, he's excellent for bouncing ideas off and he's more methodical than a number of detectives, both private and police, that I could name. I can think of a couple of cases that I might not have solved without his assistance, and quite a few others that would have taken longer if he wasn't there.

Hell, take all that away, and he's still good with people, knowing when to charm, when to wheedle and when to use his family name to smooth our path.

But he's still reckless, and because there were some things it simply isn't safe for him to know, I'd kept a few things secret.

Like the fact that, on my last case, I'd died.

Doctor Strange, the Sorcerer Supreme, and Wanda's former teacher had brought me back. He'd brought me back because he felt that I was still needed. For what, I had absolutely no idea, but Strange doesn't intervene lightly and when he does, it has far reaching effects.

It occurred to me that technically he'd broken one of the Council's seven Laws of Magic, specifically the one about raising the dead. It also occurred to me that, as Wanda's experience showed, Stephen Strange cares very little about the views and rulings of the White Council.

And by Wanda's experience, I mean, the White Council wanted to take her into custody as a kid, either to train her up or, considering how badly how powers were flaring up, to have her quietly disposed of. After a stand-off with Albus Dumbledore and Charles Xavier, neither of them men to be taken lightly and neither of them men particularly inclined to hand over a child to the dubious justice of the White Council, Strange swept in and promptly challenged the entire Council to a duel.

All of them, against him.

Since just one member of the Senior Council, my former mentor, was the Blackstaff, assassin of the White Council, given the license to break the Laws of Magic at will and in that office had touched off Krakatoa, unleashed the New Madrid Earthquake, drawn down a meteor storm that became known as the Tunguska Incident and dropped a decommissioned Soviet satellite on Casaverde, this was something to think about. The entire White Council, working in concert, could theoretically bring down Thor and Loki, maybe both at once. And Strange would have known all of that and considerably more besides.

With all that in mind, that's one _hell_ of a gauntlet to throw down.

In the end, though, no one picked it up and Strange left, Wanda at his side, without a backward glance.

To this day, no one's figured out whether he was bluffing or not. Equally, no one doubts that Strange possessed a truly humongous pair of balls for daring to make the challenge in the first place.

So, yeah, a piddly little thing like bringing me back from the dead and the potential consequences of that was unlikely to knock him off his stride.

The fact that I'd needed to be brought back in the first place, though... that scared me. It really, really scared me. I've had any number of close shaves over the years, occasionally escaping death by a literal hairsbreadth.

But, even if it's been by the skin of my teeth, I've managed to dodge the reaper and everything that's tried to bring her – according to a number of Wizards, Death is a beautiful young woman. Until recently, I'd ascribed this to wishful thinking. Now, while I hadn't seen Her, I had more of an open mind – down upon me.

Until now.

I pushed it out of my mind. Brooding over it could wait. Now, I would have to deal with my apprentice.

Or rather, I didn't, because at that moment, Murphy rescued me.

"Come on, Bruce," she said. "I need to get ready. You can help me put together my gear."

"What? Why?"

"Because," Wanda said. "I and your teacher need to get changed." _And there's not much space to do it in_ , she didn't add. She had a point. My rooms were basically confined to a bathroom, a living room/kitchen area, a bedroom and a small sub-basement.

Bruce frowned, nodded his comprehension, then followed Murphy out, shutting the door behind him.

She'd probably have him round up and check her guns and ammo while she got changed into tactical gear and take it as an opportunity to test him. While Bruce is my apprentice, Murphy is the one who teaches him the ins and outs of hand to hand combat and marksmanship. Like just about everything else he puts his mind to, he's very good at both of them – though he isn't all that fond of guns, and for good reason.

Thomas says that he respects her more than he does me. He's probably right. Murphy may be a tiny little person and look like a favourite aunt – and considering the size of her family, she probably is one – but this is the woman who was running Chicago PD's lacklustre answer to the weirdness back when the supernatural was, to most people, a joke. As a beat cop, took on a troll with only her night stick and a Loup-Garou, a werewolf on steroids, with only a .22 pistol.

Admittedly, that .22 pistol was loaded with bullets cast from inherited silver, so they packed more of a punch (the inherited part is a requirement, probably because that particular brand of werewolf is created by a curse on a bloodline), but still. It took serious guts. She's a major badass and the first name on any list of people who I trust without reserve to back me up.

For these reasons and many, many more, Bruce is simultaneously in awe of her and, though he'd never admit it, crushing on her. So, for the most part, he does as she says. For the most part.

With his and Murphy's leaving, Wanda and I were alone. I fidgeted for a moment. "Uh," I said eloquently.

"Yes?" she asked.

"I'll just go grab my stuff from my bedroom, then you can change in there," I said, then paused. I hadn't noticed her bring any bag of equipment.

As if reading my mind, she patted her jeans' pocket. "Extendable pockets," she said. "I've got it all in here."

"Well, that must make travelling easier," I said, going to my bedroom and trying not to think about the fact that she'd be following me in. I informed my libido that she would be going in after I had left and that now was really not the time.

"Much," she agreed, as I gathered up my combat clothes. "See you in a few."

Not knowing what to say in response, I mumbled an acknowledgement and stepped into the living room, and started getting dressed. As I did, morbid thoughts began to creep into my head. For instance, if I died again, would it be as relatively painless as it was last time? Or would it be that much more painful, since I would probably be eaten alive?

All morbid thoughts, however, were soon driven out of my head.

"Harry?"

I jumped, turned and froze. Wanda had changed her pants into a close fitting, but not skin tight, pair of pants made of some strange material that I couldn't identify. Whatever it was, it looked like it had seen more than one fight, with scorch marks and mended tears visible even from here. That wasn't what caught my attention, however.

She had stripped off her shirt, revealing that the promise of her clothes held not a patch on the reality. To use an old, hackneyed term, she had curves in all the right places and it was all I could do not to stare. Instead, I focused on the more practical sports bra type arrangement.

"Uh, yeah?" I asked, trying to prevent my voice from rising several octaves. Mercifully, I had changed my clothes, so I wasn't caught even half naked.

"Could you undo my bra? The catch is stuck," she said, turning around and pointing at the offending catch.

I gulped.

This may come as a surprise, but being a professional wizard, PI and occasional consultant for CPD and SHIELD is not exactly something that has women flocking to your side. Most straights, normal people, think that I'm a crook and most people in the supernatural community are wary of me. The former is steadily changing, because people are beginning to accept that magic is real and dangerous. Which often means that they go from thinking that I'm a crook to thinking that I'm Darth Dresden.

That's not exactly surprising. I'm one of the 'haves' of the supernatural world. The White Council is, by definition, the one percent of the wandless magical community. And I'm powerful, even by the standards of the White Council. On my best day, I'm in the top twenty or thirty wandless Wizards on the planet, one of the top fifty general magical practitioners, and probably well within the top one hundred superpowered people.

At this point I should mention that while I'm far more powerful than, say, Captain America, Hawkeye or Black Widow that doesn't mean that each of them couldn't kick my ass six ways to Sunday without really trying. There's more than one kind of power. Plus, having power and applying it effectively are two very different things.

That power gives me abilities, resources and, frankly, options that a lot of the supernatural community don't have. Most of them have trouble lighting candles. Some of them are pretty powerful, and I've given them a few lessons on power control and taught them the Laws. But none of them are White Council level, let alone my level.

And then there's the things that I've done. I've faced down some very nasty people and not-people, and bloodied their noses. I've even killed a few of them. Most of that was by luck, careful planning and doing something that no one expected, but to the uninformed, I was just a little bit terrifying. Hell, quite a lot of the informed felt the same way.

What I'm trying to say is that, since my last girlfriend, Susan, got halfway turned into a being a vampire, turned down my proposal and skipped town to join an order of monster hunters, I haven't really had much in the way of dating action.

Scratch that, I haven't had any. The closest I've come is one encounter with Susan when she briefly returned on a mission last year and nearly having my life force eaten by Thomas' half-sister from the vampire side of his family, Inari Raith, an incipient succubus, who hadn't known what she was.

Fun times.

And before Susan, I hadn't really done much dating since my first girlfriend, Elaine. That one hadn't ended well either, and I'd spent a decade believing that a) she'd betrayed me to our teacher and foster father, Justin du Morne, who'd gone full Darth Vader on my ass, b) that the fire in which I'd killed Justin had killed her too.

We'd both been sixteen. At that point, most kids are just worrying about homework. Us, not so much.

As it turned out, she'd been enthralled. Enthrallment is a subtle form of mind control and the target does the spell caster's bidding, apparently of their own will. It also, like all forms of magical mind control, does severe damage to the target's mind. The fact that the spell had been broken so violently by Justin's death, which came at the same time as her losing literally everything she had ever known, hadn't helped. Elaine had ended up running and seeking asylum with the Summer Court of the Fae for a decade.

That one hadn't turned out so well either, but that's another story.

So, to recap, I hadn't done much in the way of dating recently, or overall.

What dating I have done has invariably ended very badly.

And Wanda was an awfully attractive woman.

"Harry?" she prompted.

I paused for a moment, trying both not to stare and think that I'd walked into a Penthouse letter, then said, "Sure."

I walked over, stepping over my small, hairy sofa, Mouse. He seemed to be grinning at me. I sighed slightly. This is the state of my life. I am getting sassed by my freaking _dog_.

Wanda waited patiently as I stepped up behind her. She wasn't a short woman, but I'm NBA tall, so her head came up to my shoulders, giving me a fine view down her not inconsiderable cleavage, which rose and fell as she breathed. I tore my gaze away and focused fiercely on the catch of her bra. It was one of those strange catch things.

I fiddled with it for a few moments, putting my tongue between my teeth and trying resolutely not to notice how both she and I responded when my fingers ghosted over her skin.

Eventually, I managed to unhook it, causing the two straps to flop out to either side. "There," I said, firmly squashing a feeling of faint disappointment that the entire thing hadn't fallen off there and then. "Done."

Wanda looked over her shoulder and gave me a dazzling smile. "Thank you," she said, then turned around, put her hands on my bare shoulders, went up on her tip toes and gave me a soft kiss on the cheek, bra covered breasts lightly brushing against my chest.

Maybe it was the fact that I hadn't got any, or even really been actually touched by a woman who wasn't trying to kill me, in a while, but it felt like someone had hit me with a jolt of electricity, warmth flooding through my cheeks and, for that matter, the rest of my body.

It took me a moment to realise that I was blushing, like a damn teenager.

I coughed and turned away, partly to conceal my blush and partly to conceal my body's other, significantly more embarrassing, response. "Right, well, I should go and, uh, do things. Important things," I said, and cast about for the black cotton shirt I usually wore to fights. Then I realised that I was wearing it.

"I thought you were planning to have a shower," Wanda said, voice full of amusement.

I went bright red.

Mouse let out a chuffing sound that almost seemed to approximate laughter. I glared at him and merely got a doggy grin in response.

"Right," I said. "Shower time. Don't worry, I'll be quick."

Wanda stifled a giggle – which, as it happened, did some very interesting things to her chest – and I realised what I'd just said.

Oh god.

How do I get out of this one?

"I didn't mean," I began.

"Go on," she said, grinning. "And I don't mind if you take a while." Her eyes took on a wicked gleam. "No, I don't mind at all..."

I fled.

OoOoO

Wanda grinned as the tall wizard practically ran into the bathroom. She had to confess, he wasn't what she'd been expecting. She'd heard the stories, of course. Everyone had.

Harry Dresden, the Black Sheep of the White Council.

Harry Dresden, the man who had singlehandedly started a war between the White Council and the Red Court of Vampires for the sake of a woman he loved.

Harry Dresden, the adorable dork, who practically started stuttering every time he saw an attractive woman?

That last part, she hadn't been expecting. The first two, along with the numerous other stories which floated around him, whispers of how he'd killed the insane Summer Lady Aurora in single combat, taken on the Fallen and took the fight to Gravemoss beneath the catacombs of Paris, unleashing a strike that had practically punted the immortal necromancer into orbit, had given her certain expectations. Among those were that she would be working with a shadowy, brooding vigilante, a dark knight who unleashed terrible vengeance on the evil.

A good ally, in short, but not the most enjoyable of companions. What she had found, however, was significantly different.

He was tall and dark, and he definitely cut an imposing figure, all almost seven feet of him, wrapped in a long, black leather duster that belonged on the set of a spaghetti western.

He was well armed, too. The duster was enchanted, if she was any judge, to turn aside most things short of a rocket propelled grenade. A bracelet, surprisingly balanced and well made for his age, ringed with a series of miniature shields served as a defensive focus. The well carved staff in his right hand looked to be powerful and versatile focus, one that she reckoned would serve as an effective bludgeon if magic failed. Holstered in his duster was a blasting rod, good for more destructive battle magic. Reputation aside, she could see that he would be a good candidate.

If that weren't enough, he had a deep voice, too, a resonant baritone that could probably be heard halfway across a city, though he spoke softly much of the time, and he moved like he could handle himself, with or without magic.

And yet... he almost seemed _shy_.

It was different. Historically speaking, the men in her life had been supremely confident. Her father, Magneto, had always been magnificently self-possessed, getting people to follow him largely through sheer force of personality.

Her mentor, even surrogate father in many respects, Doctor Stephen Strange, had never seemed to be unsure for a single moment, as if everything that happened was following a script that he had not merely memorised, but written.

Her first really memorable boyfriend – and, let it not be forgotten, father of her child – John Constantine had practically defined insouciance, wandering into and out of trouble with a lazy quip and a lit cigarette. Admittedly, there had been fear and uncertainty under the façade, but you had to look quite hard to find it.

Her second memorable boyfriend, and most recent boyfriend full stop, had been Clint Barton, who had never been anything less than casually self-confident. Being the legendary Hawkeye, a master marksman without equal, able to hit just about anything that he aimed at, whether in snow, rain, heat or gloom of night, even if he wasn't actually looking at the target – one of his party tricks – or the target was behind him – another one of his party tricks – would instil that in a person.

Even her godson, Harry, had a certain magnetic and brash self-confidence about him, once you got past his immediate uncertainty and reserve.

Of course, all of those relationships had fallen apart, one way or another, with the possible exception of Stephen and her godson. The former, she hadn't seen more than once or twice in the last decade, and the latter, well... the rebuilding process was ongoing.

Maybe Dresden would be different, she thought, then stopped herself. She was getting a _very_ long way ahead of herself.

First, she was here on business.

Second, for all she knew, he was dating someone else.

Third, even if he wasn't, and he happened to be interested – which, she thought with a smirk, he definitely was, if only on a physical level – he had some fairly considerable trauma in his past, as far as relationships went. His most recent girlfriend had been half turned by the Red Court, and he'd promptly kicked off a war to get her back.

A small, selfish part of her thought that, at the very least, it showed that he wasn't as commitment-phobic as her last two boyfriends. Most of her most felt very sorry for him, while another small part, this one pragmatic, pointed out that he was likely in no mental shape to sign the checks that his body seemed interested in writing. And to be honest, she wasn't sure that she was either.

OoOoO

Shortly after my shower, in which cold water proved an effective (but probably temporary) antidote for my sexual frustration – after my extremities started turning blue, anyway – Wanda, now fully dressed, left to scout out the N'Garai's lair. She did so alone on the grounds that she knew how the creatures in question operated, so was best suited to defend herself if caught unawares. What she didn't say was that if she went alone, she wouldn't have to worry about trying simultaneously to find the demons, scout the area, watch her own back and watch mine.

I was fine with this as it left with time to put together my gear and get myself in the right frame of mind for a big fight. This wasn't exactly a process that required meditation, incense and total calm – that's rituals – so I wasn't entirely out of it and thus wasn't surprised when Murphy and Bruce walked in. Murphy was present because she was helping and my flat had been designated as HQ. Bruce was present because Murphy wouldn't have had time to drop him off at home, so probably felt that it was best to keep him where she could see him. Also, he's my apprentice, so he's often around my apartment in one capacity or another and has an almost unparalleled nose for trouble.

The two of them settled down, Bruce with a bunch of my notebooks in his lap and a pair of earphones in his ears – clearly he'd got round to magic proofing that MP3 player of his, Murphy with her weapons, which she set about cleaning. We soon got to chatting, because I don't tend to stay silent around other people and it was a good way to distract ourselves from the fact that we were soon to be fighting fiends from the Netherworld.

Since Bruce was apparently dead to the world and Murphy and I are close friends, I mentioned what happened earlier, if only to simply talk about it. I could have spoken to Thomas or Bob, but neither of them would have been even close to helpful.

Murphy listened, gave me a level look, then said calmly, "Wanda's attracted to you."

I stared stupidly at Murphy for a moment, before I processed what she was saying. "No she's not," I said.

Murphy let out a disgusted sigh. "For the love of god, Harry, she asked you to take off her bra," she said. "What else does she have to do, shove her tits in your face?"

I blushed and there was a loud crash as Bruce, carrying the finished pile of notebooks back towards my basement lab, tripped over his own feet. "The what now?" he asked, dazed and incredulous, from the floor. He removed an earphone as he did, but he might as well not have bothered – I could see the other end of the earphones trailing from his pocket. He'd been listening in on our conversation. The small part of me that wasn't currently mortified and frantically trying to suppress the mental image of Wanda doing exactly as Murphy had suggested was split between admiration for his ingenuity and profound irritation.

"Your teacher is the most oblivious man on the face of the Earth," Murphy said, putting her hands on her hips. "For goodness sake, Harry. This is a woman who you've said is pretty much the most powerful sorceress on the planet."

"Well, second most powerful," I began.

Murphy rolled her eyes. "Not the point," she said. "She told me earlier that she can manipulate probability. If the strap was really stuck, I'm pretty sure that she could have got it off very easily by herself. She could probably have changed her clothes with a snap of her fingers."

"But..." I said. "Nah."

Murphy stared at me. "You are useless with women, you know that?" she said, shaking her head.

"I do," Bruce piped up, gathering up the books.

I glowered at my apprentice. As usual, it had minimal effect. Part of the reason that I'm rarely angry with Bruce is that unless I _really_ blow my top, which I had done only a few months before, it has little or no effect.

"Look, Harry, I know that you're not all that used to a woman actually being interested in you," Murphy said, tone softening. "But Wanda likes you. She's trying to let you know as discreetly as she can, so you can both keep your dignity if you're not interested."

"That was discreet?" Bruce asked, eyebrow raised. When a fifteen year old, even one as mature as Bruce, is questioning your discretion, you have problems. I would know, he does it to me all the time.

"From the sounds of things, she's at least a few years out of practice," Murphy said. "And a little scared of rejection."

"Ah," Bruce said wisely.

"But, we're about to go into a fight against fiends from the Netherworld," I said feebly. "Is now really the time?"

"Harry," Murphy said. "Now may be the only time."

There was a lot more in those words than simply a gentle exhortation to seize the day. What else was in there, I had no idea, but there was _something_ else in there.

"You and she are in the same line of work," she continued. "I've seen how dangerous it can get with what you do. From what you've said, what she does is, somehow, even worse. And to be honest, that's not a career with much of a life expectancy."

I opened my mouth to point out that Wizards routinely lived for centuries, Sorcerers Supreme for even longer, then thought about it. With the exception of Strange, and if I remembered correctly, his immediate predecessor, Sorcerer Supreme wasn't exactly a long term job, by wizarding standards. Among apprentices, like Wanda, there tended to be a frankly alarming mortality rate.

And of the wizards who did live for centuries on end, very few of them tended to look for trouble the way I did.

Hell, I'd died only a few months before. Capital D Died. I'd used my Death Curse, and if it wasn't for Doctor Strange's intervention, I would have been long in my grave.

I had nightmares, sometimes, about just that.

I'd told Murphy because I'd had to tell someone, and I haven't really felt able to talk to Michael since I ended up with the (currently dormant) copy of a Fallen Angel in my head.

There was also Thomas, but, being my brother, he'd either get protective or be absolutely useless.

So maybe Murphy was hinting that I should try and get some happiness while I should.

And that was sound advice, except that, in this case, it presupposed that Wanda actually was interested in me and hadn't just had a dodgy bra strap and wanted to avoid risk using magic on something she couldn't strictly see, so close to her spine.

Right.

That was it.

Murphy stared at me for a long moment, then pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed.

At that moment, Thomas walked in, took in the scene and raised an eyebrow. "Have I missed something?" he asked.

"Ms Maximoff is shoving her boobs in Harry's face," Bruce said, tone and expression perfectly deadpan.

Thomas' other eyebrow shot upwards. "Well, well, little brother," he said, grinning. "I didn't think you had it in you."

"I think that Ms Maximoff is the one who's interested in having 'it' in her," Bruce said, tone still impressively deadpan.

I scowled at the pair of them, and at Murphy for good measure, as she started laughing.

"She did, does, not," I said. "She... Bruce and Murphy think that she's interested in me."

"Not think, boss. Know," Bruce said sagely. He turned to Thomas. "Basically, they were changing, she asked him to undo her bra strap because it was 'stuck'." He provided the requisite air commas.

Thomas shrugged. "Sounds pretty clear cut to me," he said.

"Try telling him that," Murphy said, still giggling slightly – though I was aware that if I ever described it as such to her face, she would cut my heart out with a spoon.

"He's in denial," Bruce explained.

"I am not," I protested.

Thomas slung an arm round my shoulder and gently rapped me on the skull. "Of course you are, brother mine," he said. "But since your skull is made of concrete, that's hardly surprising."

I glowered at him and shoved him off. "I am not," I said.

"You got all the brains, didn't you?" Murphy said to Thomas. She'd calmed down and resumed her expression of mingled compassion and exasperation. It was one she did very well. It occurred to me that she might just have had practice.

My brother preened slightly. "I like to think so," he said, then caught my expression and sighed. "By the sounds of things, she's into you, Harry. She's trying to let you know without coming out and telling you."

"That was my assessment," Murphy agreed. "It's sloppy."

"Sloppy?" I asked incredulously.

"Yeah," Thomas said. "She's coming onto you a little too strong, too fast." He smirked slightly. "That or she's noticed how completely blind you are."

"And clearly underestimated how blind that really is," Murphy said, with another sigh.

"She really has," Bruce said. He was leaning against the door frame now, expression amused.

"See? From the mouths of the babes," Thomas said, as I regained enough self-possession to glare at my traitor of an apprentice. Said traitor of an apprentice merely smirked at me with the sort of smugness that only the scion of one of the most powerful old money families in the entirety of North America could muster. For those who don't know, that's a lot of smug.

"She's not," I said.

Okay, even to me, that sounded feeble.

"Right. And you would know because you have such a _great_ track record of spotting when a woman is into you," Thomas said, voice dripping with sarcasm.

"You've only been living with me for a few months," I protested.

"And I've been keeping an eye on you for considerably longer than that, brother mine," he retorted.

"She spends a lot of time looking at you," Murphy put in. "And she actually laughs at your jokes."

"Which means that she's either into you, or she's clinically insane," Bruce added.

I gestured rudely at him. He merely grinned, knowing I meant nothing by it.

"The two aren't mutually exclusive," Thomas pointed out. "Indeed, you could argue that they go hand in hand."

I gestured rudely at him, too. This time, I meant something by it, but he simply grinned and opened his mouth.

Before he could say anything, however, I heard a knock on the door, and nodded at Thomas, who opened it with a single powerful yank. Vampirism has its upsides.

The door opened to reveal Wanda, who Thomas favoured with a winning smile. "I didn't know angels were doing house calls," he said.

Okay, even I think that that line is cheesy. Thomas is pretty, however, which means that he gets away with it, and much more besides. Normally, I regard this as a minor annoyance. This time, however, I found it obscurely irritating, so I stepped forward and glowered at him.

Thomas merely grinned and waggled his eyebrows at me.

Not for the first time in recent months, I contemplated fratricide.

Wanda, meanwhile, cocked an eyebrow. "I think any angel would have their work cut out with you, Mister Raith," she said wryly.

"Perhaps we could discuss it some time," Thomas suggested. "Over dinner."

I let out an incoherent growl and my knuckles whitened against my staff. Thomas was crossing a line. I was damned if I knew what that line was, but he was crossing it.

Before I could say anything on that matter, such as 'eat hot lead, Kincaid' – I know a guy called Kincaid. Trying to recreate this line in real life would be a Bad Idea – Wanda replied.

"Maybe not," she said calmly and politely.

My inner Hulk roared its approval, causing me to frown.

Thomas had flirted with a lot of extremely attractive women during his time as my housemate, and brought a number of them back to the apartment, or gone 'round to theirs, for what you might expect a psychic vampire who feeds through sex to go back for. He tries to take as little as possible, only to sip from their life force, but he still has to do it. It's that or... well. Things get unpleasant.

So, until now, I'd most regarded his actions with faint annoyance and mild envy. But when he flirted with Wanda... that was different. Why was she different?

And that was exactly the reaction my brother had wanted. Jerk.

As it was, Thomas inclined his head in graceful acknowledgement, smirked at me out of the corner of his mouth – I repeat, jerk – and went over to the side, where he set about cleaning his personal hand cannon, a Desert Eagle.

I glowered at him for a moment, then cleared my throat and turned back to Wanda, who was watching our interactions with a sharp, shrewd gaze.

"Hey," I said. "What's the nest like?"

Murphy let out a disgusted little noise, which my ego bore with good grace. Bruce also let out a disgusted little noise, which my ego didn't. I swear, apprentices' shouldn't be this insubordinate. I never was.

... Okay, so that's a complete and utter lie. My first teacher and foster father turned out to be a Warlock, a Wizard gone bad, so I ended up frying him in a duel. My relationship with my second teacher was much better, until recently, but I wasn't exactly Mister Respectful at first.

Perhaps Bruce's attitude was karma's way of saying, 'right, now it's your turn'. Or I was a bad influence on him and Thomas was worse. Both are entirely possibly.

"Not too bad," Wanda said. "It's in a quiet part of town. I've set up a few suggestion spells to clear the area, but that won't get everyone out."

"Show me where and I'll start an evacuation," Murphy said. "Set up a perimeter too."

Wanda nodded. "Make sure that whoever's on perimeter is steady and armed with large calibre weaponry. N'Garai are fast, strong, vicious and, frankly, look like they escaped from the _Alien_ movies," she said. "I can set up some light spells..."

"No need," Bruce said. "I've got some floodlights we can use."

Wanda smiled. "Thanks, Bruce," she said. "But the N'Garai are creatures of chaos. They've got their own hex field around them. It isn't very strong, but it is enough to blow fuses."

Bruce opened his mouth to counter that he'd figured a way around that, but I cut him off. Not because he hadn't – he had – but because I was damned if he was going anywhere near these things.

"No, kid," I said firmly. He turned to me, frowning. "I promised your parents that I wouldn't let you get eaten."

He stuck out his chin and folded his arms. "I'd like to see them try."

Normally, Bruce, though he's only fifteen, looks and acts several years older than he is, being the best part of six feet tall and well-built with it. With careful application of makeup, he's comfortably passed for a man in his twenties. However, right now, he looked like a sulky five year old and I was keeping up a desperate poker face.

_Mustn't laugh. Mustn't laugh. Mustn't laugh._

Why? Well, it would break his heart. And piss him off.

Thomas wasn't quite so restrained, snickering, before hurriedly turning it into a coughing fit when I glared at him.

"I've called Alfred," I said. "He should be here any minute."

"I'm not a little kid anymore, boss," Bruce said, sounding quiet and hurt. "I can help."

"One day, kid," I said. "One day."

That was probably, on reflection, the wrong thing to say.

"And when will that be?" he snapped, mood swinging like a pendulum. "When I'm thirty? When you get sick of wrapping me up in cotton wool?"

"When you're older," I said quietly. "And when you can keep your temper."

Bruce's eyebrows shot up. "You. _You_ are telling _me_ to keep _my_ temper?" he demanded incredulously. "Remind me, boss, which one of us is famous for getting angry and setting things on fire?"

"He's got you there," Thomas said.

"Ixnay," I growled, and sighed, pinching my brow and getting my steadily growing temper under control. I did not have time for a teenage temper tantrum. "Look, kid," I began.

"Save it," he snapped, and made to storm out. Wanda checked his path. While she was tall for a woman, Bruce had several inches on her. This, however, didn't seem to faze her in the slightest and something about that communicated itself to Bruce, who stopped as she gave him a considering look.

"You know," she said. "You're about my godson's age, give or take a year. Similar height, similar build, similar nose for trouble..." She smiled slightly. "Similar temper. And a similar hatred for being treated like a child."

"So what?" Bruce asked, tone somewhat sullen. He's normally a charming, well behaved, if cheeky, young man. But, grumpiness, thy name is teenager.

"So I think that you would do well to talk to him," Wanda said, voice calm and reasonable. "Because he tends to wander into trouble like this every other day. And he could tell you that it isn't a game. It isn't safe, it isn't fun and it is _nothing_ like an adventure film. It's more like a horror movie, with lots of people dying horribly and no one coming out unscathed, physically or mentally." She glanced at me, and the slight smile returned. "I'm guessing that your mentor has told you this, but you haven't listened, because, let's face it, he makes it look cool."

"I do?" I asked, then wheezed as Murphy shoved an elbow into my stomach.

Wanda's smile grew briefly, before fading into a serious expression. "Your teacher isn't being overprotective," she said. "Well, not much, anyway. He's protecting you until you're ready. And I think a very large part of him is hoping that you're never ready."

Bruce shot me a betrayed look. I couldn't exactly deny it, as that was exactly what part of me was hoping.

"Because if you aren't, you'll never face the monsters," Wanda said. "You'll never see how bad it really is. You'll be safe. And he wants you safe because he cares about you, Bruce."

"I know," Bruce said, in a tone that suggested that he probably didn't. And I wasn't the only one who noticed.

"Do you?" Wanda asked, folding her arms. "Because right now, I'm just seeing someone who wants to go out and fight the bad guys. That's not a bad thing. But it is if you let it control you. My godson did it last year and only survived thanks to a minor miracle. I did it a few times when I wasn't much older than you, and I only got out alive because of my mentor, Doctor Strange. And on one occasion, I got a scar." She reached down and pressed her right index finger to her left leg, slowly tracing a line up the inside of her thigh.

I gulped slightly and tugged at my shirt, wondering why the temperature had risen all of a sudden. Thomas gave me a feline grin, and received a stuck out tongue in return. I didn't even bother looking at Murphy. Even if I didn't have a fair idea of her expression – either a knowing look, probably suffused with a tincture of smugness or disgust at my one track mind – I'd probably see it when she mocked me mercilessly later on.

If nothing else, however, it had succeeded in gaining Bruce's undivided attention. This one I couldn't blame solely on Bruce being a teenager. As previously noted, Wanda was a very attractive woman.

"It was a minor demon," Wanda said. "Nothing serious. I've dealt with hundreds, thousands, both before and since. But this one got lucky." Her expression grew distant. "It slashed at me, and its claws laid me open to the bone, slicing through my femoral artery. If it wasn't for my teacher, the most powerful magic user on the planet and a trained surgeon, I wouldn't be here today."

She looked Bruce in the eye. "And I was several years older than you, a trained sorceress. I'd been taught how to fight with my powers and without and I had experience, lots of it. I had everything going for me, and I still nearly ended up dead," she said. "Your teacher is not asking you to stay out of it because he doesn't think you're capable. He's asking you to stay out of it because he wants you safe and he doesn't think that you're ready. He doesn't think you know what you'd be getting yourself into, and perhaps more pertinently, that you'd be doing it for the right reasons." Her tone gained a hint of tartness. "And leaving all else aside, judging by the way that you're sulking, I think that he's right."

Bruce actually pouted. But he didn't say anything. Neither did I, as, well, I had to give it to her. She'd got it pretty much bang on the nose.

Thomas decided to defuse any remaining tension by chatting with Murphy and Wanda about absolutely nothing at all, and in short order, there was another knock at the door. I got up and opened it, revealing exactly who I'd been expecting.

He wasn't particularly tall, about average height, which made him most of a foot shorter than me, and not particularly bulky. He had steadily greying hair that had once been black and he was going bald on top. His only real distinguishing features were his pale blue eyes, sharp and insightful, missing nothing.

"Alfred," I said, nodding to the older man. He was the Wayne family's butler, and he and I got on reasonably well, which was unsurprising. Saving the family from a mugging that could easily have turned into a multiple murder had made a pretty good first impression. We weren't particularly close, but we were friendly enough, and since we did much of the day to day looking after of Bruce, we often ended up exchanging notes. As I've mentioned before, he'd never been entirely happy about my teaching Bruce, but he'd always abided by the wishes of Bruce's parents, and after the Mab incident, he was resigned to the fact that Bruce was best off as my apprentice.

"Mister Dresden," he said. His eyes flickered over me, taking in my clothes and reading my body language. "Trouble?" It wasn't really a question. Alfred had been a soldier before he'd taken the path that ended in his current job, and he hadn't lost the instincts.

"Bad trouble," I confirmed. "Wayne Enterprises and the Mansion should be safe, but the rest..." I shook my head. "Look, whatever else happens, keep the family north of the Loop and off the streets." I glanced over his shoulder at Bruce, who was now in the car. He was either thinking or sulking, I wasn't quite sure. "Particularly Bruce."

"I take it that Master Bruce wanted to get involved."

I nodded and sighed. "Yeah, he did. I said no, so he won't be in a particularly good mood," I said. "And he'll probably try and give you the slip."

"I'd never have guessed," Alfred said dryly. He looked thoughtful for a moment. "I'll take him down to Applied Sciences. That generally keeps him amused and I think that Mister Fox enjoys his company."

Applied Sciences is Wayne Enterprise's mad science division. Well, not officially, but that's what it boils down to. They basically play around with theoretical technology, occasionally turning out something that they sell to SHIELD. It's not a big division, because Stark has a stranglehold on high end tech, it doesn't really do weapons and the Army prefers Hammer and Roxxon because they're cheap and not so bothered by little things like ethics.

Or at least, that's what Lucius Fox says. He's Wayne Enterprises' Company President, second in charge after Bruce's father, but he also runs Applied Sciences. He's only capable of this because it's a small division, he's got teams that deal with most of the day to day stuff in both offices and because I swear to God that man never sleeps. _Ever_.

He and Bruce get on like a house on fire, and if Bruce isn't at school, at home with his parents, in the dojo with Murphy or with me, he's usually at Applied Sciences, tinkering with whatever crazy project that they're working on this week.

Bruce would be safely out of the way there.

"Yeah, I think he does," I said. "Safe driving, Alfred." 

"Happy Hunting, Mister Dresden."

I watched as he drove off, then went back inside. I had a briefing to attend.


	2. Demons and Discombobulation

"So, this is some sort of... tank?" Bruce asked, walking around the wide, powerful looking machine. Alfred had driven him down to Applied Sciences and while he had been determined to sulk all afternoon, this vehicle had driven all thoughts of doing so out of his head.

"That it is, Mister Wayne," Fox said. "It's called the Tumbler."

"I thought we didn't do weapons," Bruce said, frowning.

"It's not really a weapon, as such," Fox said. "It's intended as a multipurpose all-terrain vehicle, for SHIELD, the Army and the UN Peacekeepers, though we've had some interest from MI13 as well."

"Multipurpose?"

Fox elaborated. "The Tumbler can drive over just about any solid surface, its bomb proof from above and below, it can reach speeds of two hundred miles per hour on a flat surface and it can outrun every single extant model of tank or armoured car on an uneven one. That's how it got its name," he said. "It's hardened against EMP's." He glanced at Bruce. "We also incorporated your notes on hardening it against magical interference. Just in case." He smiled. "You did good work there."

Bruce shrugged. "I've got a good teacher," he said.

"You do," Fox agreed. "But last time I checked, he's never been very good at working with technology. Mostly, he doesn't even try. That means that it was all your work." Bruce shuffled his feet awkwardly. "Take it from me," Fox continued. "That work seriously impressed both me and him. Don't go selling yourself short, Mister Wayne. Others will be more than happy to do that for you."

Bruce frowned, then nodded.

Fox, seeing that his advice had been taken on board, nodded in satisfaction and returned to the Tumbler.

"The front is particularly heavily armoured, allowing it to shrug off even the heaviest artillery fire and to serve as a battering ram to break through obstacles and barriers," he said. "When it can't build up sufficient speed to do that, there's also the option of rocket propelled demolition charges. It can even jump, powered by a jet booster on the back, which can also be used to give it an instant speed boost. This means that it can be used for everything from escorting supply and refugee columns to serving as a bridging vehicle to extracting soldiers or civilians from a warzone too dangerous for a helicopter, a quinjet or even one of the Army's Falcon wing-packs, to get close. You could even use it to clear mines, if you wanted."

"Whoa..." Bruce said softly. "Not exactly discreet, though."

"Well, discretion isn't generally the point, though sometimes it is helpful. And two and a half tons of tank aren't exactly easy to hide, even with a desert camouflage paint job," Fox said, and smiled. "Which is why it isn't a paint job."

"What?"

"For this part, we went a little more sci-fi," Fox said, pulling out a remote control and pressing a button. The small tank disappeared.

"Holy shit," Bruce said, stunned. The Tumbler was completely invisible. "How did you do it?"

"Well, I must confess, it's not quite the Iron Man armour. The technology isn't entirely new," Fox said. "We used the same retro-reflective panels that SHIELD's Helicarrier and Quinjets do." He pressed another button, and the Tumbler reappeared.

"Wouldn't those be quite fragile?" Bruce asked. "I mean, even one glancing hit..."

"That they are," Fox said. "And that's where we made a few tweaks." He went to the table, picked up a hammer, showed it to Bruce, then brought it down smartly on the Tumbler's side. There was a cracking sound, and abruptly, the camouflage pattern vanished from a small part of the machine, leaving behind what looked like broken solar panels. Then, before Bruce's astonished eyes, the cracks smoothed away, and in a moment, the previous colour scheme had reasserted itself. "Now, they're self-repairing. And..."

He pressed another button. The camouflage pattern shifted and blurred, before being replaced by a broadly navy blue colour scheme, with SHIELD's eagle insignia emblazoned on the side.

"You can even change the desktop theme," he said. He turned to Bruce. "So. What do you make of it?"

Bruce stared at it for a long moment, then turned to Fox. "It's amazing," he said quietly, then smiled. "I've just one question."

"And what's that, Mister Wayne?"

"Does it come in black?"

OoOoO

The four of us piled into Murph's car, with Murph driving and Wanda in the front to give directions. This meant that Thomas and I were left to jostle in the back.

"Couldn't you keep your staff between your legs?" Thomas complained, brushing the offending item. "Or in the trunk?"

"It's too long," I said.

"Well, that's something I didn't know," Wanda said, mischievous voice floating back from the front seat.

"Don't be too impressed," Murph said. "Dresden often exaggerates."

I opened my mouth to reply, then shut it as what I'd said sunk in. I flushed. Another Freudian slip. Clearly they were on a special today.

Thomas snickered and I bopped him over the head with my staff. In response, he jabbed me in the kidneys, because we're brothers. It's what we do.

"Kids, stop fighting and play nicely," Wanda laughed.

"But mom," Thomas said, in his most faux-petulant voice, one totally at odds with his cheeky grin. "He started it."

I replied the only way I could. "I did not."

"Yes you did."

"Did not!"

"Did!"

"Did not!"

"Did!"

"Did not!"

"Good god, you two make _Bruce_ look grown up," Murph complained. "Can't you just behave?"

Thomas and I shared a look then, in poker faced unison, we said, "No."

Murph sighed and gently thumped her head against the steering wheel. Wanda, meanwhile, just laughed.

Like I said. We're brothers, it's what we do.

All silliness quickly faded, however, once we got to the site. It was a grim building on Chicago's South Side, in an area that just reeked of poverty, bitterness and desperation. Any hope had fled this place a long time ago, and the powers that be had not yet marked it out for gentrification in the way they had a number of the surrounding neighbourhoods. Anyone coming to live here, in short, likely had no place else to go. It was the sort of place that attracted predators, some human, some not. So, really, the fact that the N'Garai had holed up here wasn't much of a surprise and I braced myself for any number of nasty sights.

In retrospect, I should have braced harder.

The door was unlocked and Wanda and I made our way inside. At the same time, Murph surveyed the area and called in her officers to set up a perimeter and Thomas watched her back, just in case one of the N'Garai tried to jump her while she was making the call.

Almost as soon as we opened the door and stepped into the dilapidated concrete building we were assaulted by the sickly sweet smell of rotting meat, which lay over the usual scents of dust, dirt and disuse like a thick blanket.

In the next room, a dilapidated bedroom, was a scene of carnage.

It wasn't the first dismembered body, or group of bodies, I'd seen, but it was certainly one of the nastier ones. The guts, bones and other chewed and cast off bits from a lot of different bodies had all been mixed together into one fetid pile large enough to fill a small bathtub.

The smell of rot and decay was overpowering, reaching in and switching on my gag reflex. I retched, grabbing the doorway for support. I've seen plenty of dead bodies, and after a while, you get used to them. Emotionally speaking, they don't affect you as much. Well, it's either that or you get better at compartmentalising. To be honest, I'm not quite sure. But no amount of experience is going to make the smell any less foul.

I wiped my mouth and looked up as I felt a hand on my shoulder.

"You okay?" Wanda asked gently, apparently not bothered by the smell, which made one of us. Either her amount of experience did make her immune to the effects of a stench so bad that you could smell it with your teeth, or she simply couldn't smell it, or she was somehow using magic to filter the air around her. Ebenezar mentioned it once, when I was mucking out the stables on his farm and complained about the smell. Apparently it's a wanded trick, but if any wandless Wizard could pull it off, it would be the woman in front of me.

"I'll be fine," I said, grimacing.

Wanda nodded, and crouched down by the pile. She examined it for a moment, then nodded. "We're in luck," she said. "There's maybe ten N'Garai here. Certainly no more than a dozen."

"Counting the big one?" I asked.

Wanda shook her head. "The N'Garai are semi social creatures. While they can and often do hunt individually, if they can they bring their prey back to a single communal feeding site. The Mabdhara, by contrast, prefer to feed alone. They either hunt for themselves or make their underlings bring them prey."

"Social, huh?" I asked. "That doesn't sound like most demons I know. Fae, yes, though it varies from species to species."

"They're closer to the Fae in that they're a species unto themselves rather than simply a group of spirits that take on similar forms in the mortal world," Wanda said. "But unfortunately, they don't have the same vulnerability to iron." She chewed her lip thoughtfully and I had to push away an idle thought that it made her look rather cute. Now was really not the time or the place. "If they were, well... ball bearings and iron filings are cheap and a bit of blunt force telekinesis isn't exactly difficult."

"That's how I'd do it," I agreed. Well, actually, my method of choice had been a swarm of Little Folk armed with plastic handled box knives. Not pretty, but as past experience has proved, very effective. "And I'm guessing since we're talking here, we're not going to have our faces ripped off by a hungry demon."

Wanda shook her head. "They tend to be nocturnal, so they'll be holed up somewhere cool and dark for the day," she said, and her expression darkened. "It's just a personal theory, but I think that Chthon designed them to hunt at night."

"To make people even more afraid of the dark than they already are," I said. "That makes sense. It's even kinda clever. You know, from the point of view of a psychopath."

Wanda raised an eyebrow. "Is that a point of view that you're familiar with?"

"Every day, before my morning coffee," I said, and she laughed softly. "You?" I asked.

Wanda's expression turned dark and grim. "More than I would like," she said. She glanced at me. "Let's just say that my father is a piece of work."

Part of me was very curious as to who that father was. And I wasn't the only one. Wanda's mother was known to be a Maximoff, a Romani clan famous for producing powerful Wizards. Hell, if I remembered correctly, one or two were on the Council. No one, however, knew who her father was. Some went with the old Merlin story, with her being sired by Lucifer or some other Fallen Angel. Having met a few of Old Nick's stooges, I was pretty damn sure that this wasn't the case. Others suggested, rather more plausibly, that Strange himself was her father. Personally, I hadn't put too much thought into it – if nothing else, I didn't exactly have any stones to throw in regards to potentially dodgy parentage.

"My mother was too," I said quietly. "Or at least, that's what I've heard."

"I liked her well enough," Wanda said absently, standing up and examining the sunken building.

I blinked, before straightening up. "You knew my mom?" I asked, stunned.

"I met her, once," Wanda corrected. "She came to talk to Doctor Strange." She glanced at me. "She was pregnant with you, as it happens."

Well. This was awkward.

"Uh..." I said. "Okay." It was very easy to forget that though Wanda looked about my age, maybe even a little younger, she was actually half my age again.

Wanda smiled wryly. "I was fifteen," she said. "Weird?"

"No," I said, then, on seeing her raised eyebrow, amended my statement. "A little bit."

"Only a little?"

"My second teacher is something like three hundred years old," I said. "Fifteen years is nothing."

Wanda's voice grew drier. "Good to know that I remind you of a short, grumpy Scottish farmer," she said.

"What? No, I, uh, you, um," I began, stumbling over my words. Clearly, she'd done her homework on me.

Wanda snorted. "I know what you meant, Harry," she said, smiling. "I was just teasing you."

"Oh. Ah. Good," I said, trying to force my tongue into saying something other than incoherent mumblings. God, this was embarrassing. In hindsight, it was perfectly obvious that she was teasing me, but at the time... well. I think it should be fairly obvious that I didn't instantly clue to it.

She chuckled softly. "And in any case, I like Ebenezar," she said. "I've worked with him and I think he's a good man. It's an honour to be compared to him."

"Yeah," I said, slightly sourly. It hadn't been long ago that I'd found out that my mother wasn't the only piece of work in the magical side of my life. Ebenezar McCoy, my mentor, was the Black Staff, the White Council's assassin, authorised to break the rules of magic whenever the Council required it. And he'd been the one to teach me that all magic came from life, not just how to use it, but why. The irony was not lost on me.

Wanda studied me for a moment, a pensive expression on her face. But, whether it was because we were in a den of demons or because she decided against it, she didn't ask. Instead, she said, "Your mother was a good person, Harry. Not without her flaws, but a good person. And believe me, she loved you very much."

I was silent for a long moment, letting Wanda's words sink in. If you're not an orphan, it's probably difficult to understand, but I'd never known my mother. She'd died in childbirth, her death manufactured by Thomas' father as it happens. He'd paid for his part in it – he was alive, if you were using the strict biological definition, but he was a puppet on someone else's psychic strings. Considering he'd done exactly that to who knew how many women over the centuries, and tried to do it to my mother, I felt that he was more than welcome to it.

But that didn't change the fact that I'd never met her. The closest I'd come to doing so was an all too brief encounter with a sort of copy of her consciousness inside my brother's head (long story). Add that to the fact that my mom walked on the Dark Side for a while, meaning most of the people who knew her then aren't the sort that I'd want to have a heart to heart with, and I think you can understand why I savoured every little scrap of information I could find about her.

My face must have been an open book, because Wanda gave me a sad, knowing smile. "You aren't the only one who never knew their mother," she said. "And I'll tell you everything I know about yours." She glanced around. "Once we've finished demon hunting."

I nodded and got my game face on. "You said that there might be Mindless Ones," I said.

Wanda nodded. "They don't hunt," she said. "They just mindlessly destroy everything in their path." She paused. "Which, come to think of it, makes them _very_ like frat boys. Maybe there's something to what you said earlier..."

"The Nevernever _is_ affected by the part of the mortal world you enter it from," I said slowly.

Wanda nodded. "Well, the N'Garai won't be far, and the Mindless Ones probably won't be either. But if we can't find them..." She smiled slightly. "Then at least we'll know where to start looking." She turned to the dark corridor, and the smile faded, to be replaced with an expression of grim determination. "In the meantime, we'd better keep going."

OoOoO

We spent another twenty minutes poking around the building, but found nothing. Wanda didn't seem too surprised.

"If it was just a pack of N'Garai, I'd expect them not to stray too far from their feeding site," she said. "But with the Mabdhara commanding them, they've got a bit more strategic know-how. They'll have holed up somewhere else for the day. Not too far away, but far enough."

"We can't just wait until they bring someone in," I said.

"I know," Wanda said. "That's why we're going fishing."

"Fishing?" I asked, then got it. "You're going to set a lure."

Wanda nodded. "A little bit of blood mixed with a bit of olfactory misdirection – it's like ventriloquism of the nose," she said. "They'll think that they can smell a fresh kill, and, well, they're not very bright. If you, Karrin and Thomas all donate a drop, that should seal it. And, for the final flavour, a little bit of chaos magic," she said. "Like calls to like, after all."

"Blood works best, huh?" I asked.

"Yes, especially human blood," Wanda said. "It's like the Little Folk and milk and honey." She paused. "Though, to be honest, they're happy if it's just milk and sugar. I tried coffee once." She shuddered. "Never again."

I imagined one of the Little Folk on coffee and winced. The Little Folk, minor fae, tend to be hyperactive and easily distracted at the best of times. One on a caffeine rush didn't bear thinking about.

"I've found something that works better," I said.

"Really?" Wanda asked.

"Pizza," I said, and grinned at her astonished expression. "I thought so too, but they go crazy for it."

Wanda stared at me, dumbfounded, then shook her head and chuckled. "You learn something new every day," she said. "How did you discover that one?"

I grimaced. "Honest answer? I was tired, I couldn't be bothered to head out to get some groceries and I had some cold pizza lying around," I said.

"I'll bear that one in mind," Wanda murmured. "Now, I think we'd better get a move on."

In fairly short order, the donated blood, mine, Murphy's and Wanda's the usual red, Thomas' the slightly pinkish shade that marks out White Court blood from human, swirled in a silvery bowl that Wanda had apparently conjured out of thin air. The bowl was duly put in a circle and Wanda murmured the spell in a voice that made my stomach do backflips and broke the circle.

"Now," she said. "We wait."

So we did. We waited for several very boring, very nerve wracking hours. After all, you never knew whether at this very moment a demon was going to start trying to chew its way through your spine or not. It's like they say – the worst part is the waiting.

Then, as the sun started setting, something long and dark slipped out of the shadows. It was over six feet long, with a powerful tail that made it even longer, backwards facing knees on its powerfully muscular hind legs built for pouncing. It had long fore legs too, tipped with three fingered claws that looked almost like hands, which suggested that it was just as comfortable on two legs as four. Its head was long, almost like the head of a pick-axe viewed from the side, and a thick brow ridge that spiked out like a set of horns was set above cruel, hungry red eyes. In short, with its purplish, nodule hide, it looked like an Ice Age era relative of one of those creatures from the _Alien_ films, bigger, badder and meaner.

It looked from side to side, then scuttled out towards the bowl, sniffing at it. Then, it let out a shrieking call that pressed the button in my head marked 'primal terror'.

A moment later, another dozen of the creatures slipped out, surrounding the bowl, sniffing. They seemed confused, and made it known with little shrieking calls.

"Harry."

I twitched at the soft whisper, then relaxed. It was Wanda.

"Get ready," she murmured. "The Madbhara will come out soon to investigate. When he makes his appearance, take out as many of the ones around the bowl as you can."

I took a deep breath and nodded, acutely aware that even with Wanda backing me up, if I missed one, the others would zero in on me and tear me apart.

Better not miss, then.

I slowly drew my blasting rod and began to summon up as much power as I could.

Then, I felt the ground shake and, careful not to release my focus, I glanced over to the shadows where the first of the N'Garai had emerged from. Now, something new emerged, just like the other N'Garai but considerably scaled up. Where the others were the size of a big cat or a large black bear, this one was closer to a bull elephant, with dull hide the colour of dried blood and its eyes… they gleamed with cruelty and hunger too, but there was something much more worrying there.

Intelligence.

This was the Madbhara, and it was every bit as bad as I had imagined.

It wasn't alone, either, flanked by two N'Garai and a baker's dozen of Hulk sized creatures that looked like crude stony statues, utterly devoid of any features beyond three blocky fingers on each hand and a red v-shaped slit where eyes should be. The Mindless Ones.

"Now," Wanda hissed.

I drew up the power and let it a loose with a shout. _"FUEGO!"_

A thick beam of roaring flame lashed out, bisecting two of the creatures around the bowl then, as I swept it to my right, did the same to another seven, tearing through them with a popping, boiling explosion of sound as burning bits went everywhere.

That left three others, which scattered, screeching their fury.

The Mindless Ones, meanwhile, had charged into battle, going straight through the house in their way without slowing down, along with the two N'Garai that had flanked the Mabdhara, all closing on Wanda.

As I caught my breathe, my heart nearly stopped.

But she, by the looks of things, didn't even blink. Instead, she flicked a wrist and murmured a couple of words. Red power leapt from her hand and pooled on the tarmac between her and the Mindless Ones, transforming a good ten metres by five into molten tar, bogging the giant creatures down.

The N'Garai, though, each performed the sort of corkscrewing leap I'd only previously seen in startled cats, avoiding the same fate, landing with similarly catlike grace and charging Wanda, one from each side. But again, she was equal to it, leaping into a forward roll, hands glowing again. I only realised what she'd done after she'd done it, it was that subtle – she shifted the vectors of the two demons, putting them on a collision course. A moment later, they crashed in a rolling, writhing and screeching ball of thrashing limbs and confusion, leaving a trail of dark-greenish blood behind them as their claws tore through each other's armoured skin.

A moment after that, Wanda sprang to her feet and with a move that looked like something out of Murph's katas, reached out and redirected a beam of crimson red energy that roared out the eye of one of the trapped Mindless Ones, directing it into the two N'Garai, who had yet to disentangle themselves. The resultant explosion sent bits of demon raining all over the street.

I, meanwhile, stared, gobsmacked. In less than thirty seconds, Wanda had taken out two seriously nasty demons and bogged down thirteen powerful constructs. And she'd barely lifted a finger. As I watched, dumbfounded she casually reached up and pulled her hair into a ponytail, deflecting a blast from one of the flailing Mindless Ones with an idle wave. Instead of hitting her, it shot back over their heads and turned the remains of the house that they'd bulldozed to rubble. My shields can tank a lot, and I was pretty sure that they could take one of those shots, if require. What I didn't think was that I could do it with the sort of absent mindedness that Wanda had displayed, as if waving away an errant wasp.

I shook my head and looked about for the three N'Garai that had scattered.

As if on cue, I heard the sound of gunfire from Murph's perimeter. But that sound was drowned out. No, it wasn't drowned out, it was simply absorbed and overlaid by something far more sinister.

The Mabdhara laughed.

Have you ever heard a demon the size of a garbage truck laugh? Well, until that moment, I hadn't either, and I could have gone through the rest of my life without the experience.

It was loud and deep, not a challenging bellow, but an amused chuckle, albeit scaled up and filtered through teeth that would have made a Tyrannosaurus feel inadequate.

Each chuckle shook the windows and me, right down to my bones.

That thing I said about laughter? How it was particularly creepy and _wrong_ when coming from something this inhuman? I was experiencing it up close and personal.

Then, the shadows around it began to boil, flickering with crimson light and after a few moments, Mindless Ones began to pour out, thundering in neat lines like a co-ordinated earthquake. Joining them were more of the N'Garai, larger, meaner looking. If the N'Garai were ants, then the ones before, nasty as they were, had been workers. This were soldiers.

"Oh," Wanda said quietly. "Oh _bugger._ "

Instinctively, I went back to back with her, a small part of me reflecting that if I was going to die, at least I was going to die in the company of a beautiful woman.

It's amazing the sort of things that the mind turns to when violent death is apparently imminent. Appropriate, no. Helpful, no. Comforting, somewhat.

Of course, I had no intentions of dying if I could avoid it. Nor, as it happened, did Wanda.

Fun fact: like most things of and not of this Earth, the N'Garai don't like being hit by lightning.

Wanda was chucking lightning bolts with an ease I'd only previously seen from a freaking Faerie Queen. This was both scary and extremely reassuring.

I played my part with a powerful wall of force that sent even a couple of Mindless Ones staggering back.

"Either bring them down at the ankles or aim for the eye-slit," Wanda said crisply.

I didn't have time to reply, as one of the giant constructs bore down on me, eye-slit glowing with enough power to leave a scorched patch of ex-wizard on the battered tarmac.

So, naturally, I did something very stupid.

You see, while the Mindless Ones are over ten feet tall, I am most of seven feet high. I can look down on guys in the NBA. And my staff, no innuendo intended, is very long indeed.

As it looked down at me, I stabbed it in the eye with my staff. This wasn't simply a defiant gesture the same way that my staff isn't simply a magical gun. It's a tool for manipulating forces and currently, I was using it to create a plug of force in the exact shape of its eye-slit.

So when the Mindless One tried to blast me, the blast couldn't make it past the plug. But it still had to go somewhere. And that somewhere was just about everywhere else. With a thunderous boom, the Mindless One's head exploded, launching bits rocklike flesh like shrapnel from a grenade, tearing into some of the more unfortunate N'Garai.

I let out a semi-drunken whoop. "WHO'S NEXT?!" I demanded.

Every single N'Garai and Mindless One turned and stopped, focusing on me. Then, as one, they charged, converging on me from all directions. In hindsight, that was the wrong question to ask.

Before I could raise any defences, however, I went shooting upwards like a cork from a bottle, flailing and trying hold onto my staff and other accoutrements. I might not survive a fall from this height, but dammit, if I was going to die as a splat on the tarmac, I was going to die as a _wizardly_ splat on the tarmac.

"Relax," Wanda's voice said, amused. "Sorry for the abrupt introduction to aeromancy, but I needed to get you out of there."

I looked down and remembered that magic has to do business with physics. There is no free lunch. However, the price that has to be paid can, by a clever practitioner, be turned into a bonus.

For instance, where Wanda had briefly removed gravity's hold on me to get me up into the air, she'd increased it around the point where I'd been, drawing all the monsters in. For the moment, they were helpless.

Wanda waved a hand.

You know, I've lived in Chicago for most of ten years. I've seen many weird, wonderful and wicked things. Until this point, however, I had never seen a small volcanic eruption in the middle of the street.

"It was that or a tornado," Wanda said casually. "And I wanted to avoid a city wide panic. Besides, they're more James' thing."

"James?" I managed.

"Thor. When he was human, he was called James," she explained.

"Oh," I said, and resumed staring at bubbling pool of lava. "That is some very impressive vulcanomancy," I said eventually.

"Thank you," Wanda said. "But I couldn't have done it if it wasn't for your distraction. That was inspired.

"Uh…"

She snorted. "I know you didn't mean it," she said. "But a large part of this business is adapting to circumstances and turning them to your advantage."

"That's true," I said. "For instance, I can see that you missed a few of demons and they're heading for Murph's perimeter. Oh, and the Mabdhara's eating a police horse."

"What?" Wanda asked sharply.

I pointed. The Mabdhara was indeed eating a police horse, the legs of which were feebly twitching, while the forcibly dismounted cop was crawling away with what looked like a twisted ankle. "That saddle's got stuck in its teeth," I added helpfully.

Wanda cursed. "I'll rescue the cop and try and bring down the Mabdhara. You pick off the ones going for Karrin and her people."

"How?"

"Try not to scream."

" _What."_

I didn't manage anything more, however, before a powerful gust of wind swept me up and hurled me through the sky like I was on the world's weirdest and bumpiest water slide. The only reason I didn't scream was because it felt like the wind was blowing the scream back down my throat. A few seconds later, I hit a flat roof with a thump, dropping and rolling, thanking my foresight in training with Murph.

And what did you know, Wanda's aim had been near perfect. I was at the top end of a shooting gallery. I was standing on the roof of the building just in front of Murph's barricade. It had not fared well under the N'Garai's assault. The barricade fences had been smashed apart and tossed aside, while one cop car had been turned into a twisted heap of scrap metal and, when I looked closely, a few splayed and scattered limbs were visible. All three sights served as immediate reminders that these demons were _powerful._

But they weren't invincible. Murph, blue eyes blazing with fury, stamped on the throat of a downed demon, firing three rounds into its head. The older SI officers were holding their ground too, drawing the demons into a deadly crossfire. However, the N'Garai could shrug off a lot and like any predator, they would go after any sign of weakness and fear. More than one young officer, looking for excitement and adventure in what had once been the dumping ground for officers with too much conscience or simple bad luck. Kids, only a few years older than Bruce, had stepped up to serve their city and been dismembered by creatures that simply didn't belong.

That. Made. Me. Mad.

So I stood tall and drew my blasting rod, sending power surging through the runes and sigils of it, lighting it up with a furious white hot light that blazed across the night time streets like a beacon.

No more.

Murph looked up and saw me. Hell, so did the rest of her boys. She and a few of the older ones, the ones who remembered the night the Loup Garou had got loose in their lock up and the way I'd responded, got down, the rest following on Murph's barked orders.

The N'Garai didn't take advantage, though, because they looked up to, not just seeing the light but sensing my power.

Good.

I wanted them to know that this was coming.

I levelled the rod and roared as loudly as I could, _**"FUEGO!"**_

White hot flame lashed out in a thick beam, splashing on the tarmac as it engulfed the first of the N'Garai. There were five others, but that didn't matter: the beam chased them down too, carving a molten line through the tarmac, the sheer heat vaporising whatever it touched. Tarmac, trash or terror of the night, nothing could withstand it.

Finally, the last was gone, and I looked down at the glowing street. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Murph and her boys slowly getting to their feet, eyes as wide as saucers as they stared at me. I probably looked quite impressive. Or terrifying. Or both – the line between the two isn't that thick.

Thankfully, the building had a fire ladder down the side, allowing me to make a reasonably dignified descent. Murph met me at the bottom. I arched an eyebrow at her. "What?"

She continued to stare at me.

"My hair looks weird, doesn't it?" I asked, a creeping feeling of foreboding running through me. I somehow doubted that an impromptu trip through the skies had done much for my hair.

She studied me for a moment, then smiled slightly. "Don't you ever change, Harry," she said. Her expression turned serious and she turned, leading me out of the alley. "You picked a good time to step in," she said. "We were in trouble."

It took a lot for her to admit that and I didn't try and cheapen it with platitudes. SI basically did the same job as SHIELD on a much smaller budget and proportionately less respect for it. That's changing now, but slowly and while they were good, very good – in fact, I'd go so far as to say that with the equipment they had, the only way they could be better was with specialised training – they sometimes ran into things they couldn't handle.

That was why Murph had started employing me. At first, it had just been to find things and provide an expert opinion on the spooky, but once she realised how good I was at handling supernatural threats that were, let us face the facts, out of SI's league.

The N'Garai, by the looks of things, were one of them and unless I was seeing things, had killed a few of Murphy's boys.

So instead of mumbling a platitude, I reached down (a long way down. Murph is a little bitty person. Also, she'd beat me to death with my own torn off arm if she ever heard me say that) and squeezed her shoulder.

For a moment, she reached up and took my hand in one of her own. Then she turned to me, eyes hard and professional again. "Are any more coming our way?"

I consulted my memory. "No," I said. "Most of them are… oh crap."

OoOoO

"Mister Fox, sir?" one of the Applied Science interns said.

"Yes?" Fox asked. "What is it?"

"You're going to want to see this, sir," the intern said, handing over a tablet. Bruce craned his neck to see over Fox's shoulder. It was a news report from downtown, where, in the words of the news, 'a battle royale' was taking place between Chicago's police force, some unidentified creatures, possibly mutated animals of some kind and what seemed to be large robots led by a giant animal like something out of a Godzilla film, and a small group of civilians who seemed to be assisting the Chicago police. One had been tentatively identified as Chicago's professional wizard, Harry Dresden.

"I see," Fox said. "Tell the board to make preparations to evacuate as many members of staff as possible and to help the authorities with disaster management and relief. And…" He trailed off as he heard an enormous engine start. Belatedly, he remembered that among Bruce Wayne's many talents was a knack for disappearing from right under even the most observant nose.

He turned and began to run, but it was too late.

The Tumbler leapt forward, thundering out of the garage.

"Um, sir?"

Fox sighed. "Notify city authorities. Tell them that the black… tank is not to be fired upon. Tell them… in fact, tell them not to stop it. I'll try and get through to Lieutenant Murphy, warn her of what's coming."

Lieutenant Murphy, however, wasn't in a position to pick up, and Bruce Wayne drove on to his date with destiny.

OoOoO

I set off at a sprint.

Wanda was, without a doubt, one of the most powerful practitioners I'd ever met, let alone seen in action. I'd seen her do some truly incredible things. And fact was, she was probably more powerful than I was by at least a factor of five, if not ten.

But power is worth absolutely fuck all when you're surrounded by demons and one gets in a lucky shot. And considering how strong the N'Garai, the weaker demons, were, I didn't even want to think about what one lucky shot from one of those would do to her.

As I went thundering towards her last position, however, I left myself open to being tackled by what felt like a speeding car. I went flying, head smacking against the tarmac as I rolled along the road like a dropped pencil. The only reasons I survived where the fact that my duster is extremely heavily enchanted and the fact that I'd managed to raise and interpose some of my shield on raw instinct.

Still. Just because I survived didn't mean that it didn't hurt like hell and I didn't have a large, slavering demon looking to dine on wizard about to do just that. Because it did and I did.

I tried to prop myself up and raise a defence, or unleash a counter-strike, but my head had been pretty rattled and I was having difficulty focusing.

The N'Garai prowled towards me, the ever present hunger in its eyes reaching new heights.

That was when my brother struck like a thunderbolt. He must have leapt fully sixty feet, landing on the demon's back, bearing it to the floor with incredible force, pinning it to the ground with his Cavalry Sabre. His skin glowing marble white, his eyes solid silver and waves of cold rolling off him, he then went to work, ripping the sabre free and moving a flashing blur of concentrated violence. The dark blood of the N'Garai went flying and the demon went insane. One or two of its blows struck, Thomas' pinkish red blood, a couple of shades too light to be human, mixing with its own, but it didn't stand a chance.

While the White Court is nominally the weakest of the major vampire courts, one that avoids straight combat by any means possible, preferring to use their prettiness, psychic manipulations and backroom dealing to handle their enemies without ever getting their hands dirty. Thomas is something of the exception to the rule. Less than a year ago, when well-fed, I'd seen him wrestle with a Black Court vampire, a creature easily as strong as one of the N'Garai, and force a draw, despite having just been shot. While he was nowhere near that well-fed now and he'd been fighting for some time, he was still more than capable of demonstrating exactly how dangerous a White Court Vamp could be.

The whole fight took less than five seconds. When it was over, the demon was diced pieces and Thomas wasn't even breathing hard. More worryingly, his demon, the source of his supernatural power, hadn't retreated yet.

"What took you?" I managed.

Thomas blinked, and his eyes darkened. He sneered. "I had better things to do than save wizards who can't even keep their eyes open," he said.

"Freaking lazy vampires," I said, taking his hand and getting to my feet. "Wanda."

"Was handling herself just fine last I saw," Thomas said and shook his head. "Man, I thought you were strong."

"I am," I said. "It's just that there's a difference between strong and…"

"Really strong?"

"Sure, let's go with that."

Thomas nodded, keeping half an eye on me, in case I was about to collapse. "Well, you don't need to worry about her," he said. "She's probably just fine."

Thomas' prediction was dead on, as it happened. When we found her, Wanda was battered, bloody and, oh yes. She was surrounded by corpses for at least three dozen feet in every direction.

She turned to look at us and grinned. "What took you so long?"

Thomas shot me a significant look. I ignored him.

"Demon or two," I said casually. "Nothing much."

At that moment, my balance temporarily gave out, and if it wasn't for Thomas I'd have gone down in a highly embarrassing heap.

"Nothing much?" Wanda asked, eyebrow raised.

"Nothing much," Thomas said, poker faced.

I sighed. "Is that all of them?" I asked, gesturing at the demons and constructs that littered the street. Some of them littered several different parts of the street. Others… well, I think at least one had dissolved.

Wanda's mood changed abruptly. "All of them except for the Madbhara. He's protected against magic," she spat, clearly angry with herself.

"Huh?"

"Short version, there's enough chaos in this world that he can use it to magnify his natural hex field," Wanda said grimly. "And disrupt our magic."

"Is there any way we can break through?" I asked.

"We can still hurt him indirectly," Wanda said. "And if we break his concentration, we can hit him with magic." She grimaced. "But we can't do both at once, not while preventing him from rampaging through Chicago."

"He doesn't look like doing that," Thomas said, peering at the now visible bit of the Mabdhara.

"He's taking his time," Wanda said. "He knows I can't hurt him and hold him in place, so he doesn't have to get urgent. So he's still eating that police horse."

"Then what?" I asked.

"Harry!"

I turned to see Murphy carefully making her way over the rubble, carrying a radio. "What?"

"It's Bruce," she said.

I swallowed a number of swear words and ground my teeth for good measure. "Tell him I don't have the time."

"I think you're going to want to hear this," Murph said steadily, and tossed me the radio. I fumbled the catch, then held it up to my ear.

"This is a real bad time, Bruce," I said.

"I know," he replied, the radio crackling.

I frowned. "How the hell did you get onto this frequency, anyway?"

"The Tumbler tuned me in."

What the hell was a Tumbler?

"The what?" I asked.

"Tumbler. It's... well, it's a sort of tank."

"A tank," I said flatly.

"With a jet engine on the back."

I gently thumped my head against the wall and sighed. "Bruce, I'm sure that it's very cool, but –"

"I know. I'm coming to help you."

"What? No!" I snapped. "Hell's Bells, kid, I sent you to Applied Sciences to get you out of trouble, not so you could tool up and come join us! Turn the... whatever it is the hell around and go home!"

"No, boss," he replied firmly. "I saw you on tv. You're pinned down, and that thing is shrugging off your magic."

"That's a problem that we're going to solve, Bruce," I said. "Not you."

"With respect, boss, it's my city too."

I opened my mouth to argue some more, then closed it, and sighed. This wasn't just Bruce not listening to me out of sheer contrariness. I could hear a quiet and unshakeable conviction in his voice.

"What did you have in mind?" I asked reluctantly. Whether I liked it or not, Bruce was growing up. I'd only been a year older than him when I'd ended up in my first life or death duel. That had been my own very literal trial by fire, and the consequences have haunted me ever since. I hoped that Bruce's wouldn't have the same effect.

"Ram the Mabdhara at top speed and hit it with the demolition charges that this thing is packing," Bruce said. "After that, I figured that it would be stunned enough for you and Wanda to put down."

"That could work," I said, then noticed Wanda beckoning.

"Pass it here," she said. I did, and she rested the radio between ear and shoulder with an air of long practice. "Bruce, this is Wanda. Can your machine calculate its ETA?"

After a moment, she got a crackly reply, and nodded. "Hang back, about... five minutes away," she said, tone brisk and commanding. "On my cue, come in at full speed. Trust me, you'll know what it is. Once you see it, hit the big monster with everything you've got. It should be stunned."

I heard Bruce give her an affirmative.

"Good," Wanda said. She turned to Murph. "Lieutenant, open up your barricade like a gate down West 31st Street. They'll want to be well clear when Bruce comes down there."

Murph nodded, taking the radio and snapping out orders.

Wanda, meanwhile, turned to me, puzzled. "I know that he's Bruce Wayne, but seriously, how did your apprentice lay hands on a jet powered tank?"

"He's friends with most of Wayne Enterprises' mad science division," I said.

"And he moves very quietly," Thomas added, from right behind my left ear.

I jumped and whirled on my brother. Bruce wasn't the only one who could sneak up on people. Thomas's brief smile suggested that he'd done it on purpose. But it was only a brief smile. He looked tired, and his clothes were streaked with his blood, a few shades too pale to be human, and, along with his Civil War era Cavalry Sabre, liberally spattered with the dark blackish-green blood of the N'Garai. There was some drying ectoplasm, too, from the Mindless Ones. While they didn't transform into the stuff on death, they did seem to bleed it.

He was holding himself slightly gingerly, too, and standing as close to him as I was, I could feel waves of cold radiating off him, even now. His eyes were very pale, and they kept drifting over to Wanda. Alone, any of that would have been worrisome. Put together and they were very not good.

White Court Vampires are capable of some incredible things, particularly if their demon, their Hunger, is well fed. But these days, Thomas wasn't well fed, even at the best of times. He only took a little from those he fed on, because taking more tended to run the risk of addicting them or even killing them. While great for his conscience and general morality, it meant that he had far less power to draw on, and an extended fight tended to drain him quickly, meaning that, in turn, he had to focus on keeping his Hunger under control, as it looked for the nearest person to feed on.

In this case, that was Wanda, who was perfectly aware of this and consequently watching Thomas out of the corner of her eye. She didn't seem afraid, but she was aware and holding herself ready. In truth, if they got into it, I'd be more worried about Thomas, but tangling with a vampire, any vampire, at close range is risky business.

"Thomas," I said, taking him by the shoulder. He focused on me, and his eyes darkened a few shades. "Go to Murph, get a radio, then go high. Tell her if you see any stragglers."

Thomas' jaw tightened, then he nodded sharply, scaling the rubble with feline grace.

Wanda watched him go, and not merely to take an opportunity to check out his ass (though she was probably doing that as well), as most women frequently did. She had a thoughtful expression on her face. "I'd heard stories, but I wasn't sure I believed them. He really is different," she said. "You trust him with Lieutenant Murphy?"

"He's trying to be better," I said. "And yes, I do. If nothing else, she's surrounded by other cops who know what they're dealing with. Also, if his Hunger did get out of control, I'd trust her to shoot him somewhere non-lethal."

Wanda nodded.

"Now," I said. "Bruce is coming in about..."

"Three minutes."

"Right," I said. "You sounded like you had a plan."

Wanda nodded. "Cover my back," she said, and her eyes began to glow with scarlet red energy. Her hands started moving, drawing lines of that same energy in the air. At first, it looked like each movement was entirely at random, with no connection to the others. Then, a pattern began to emerge, a complex weave of something that wasn't quite magic, but was maybe a close relative. To be honest, I had no idea what it was, and at that moment, I was reminded of how much I still had to learn.

This may sound weird for a man my age to say, but I'm still a baby by magical standards. Wizards can live for close to half a millennium – though that is pushing it – and don't reach full magical maturity until they hit a century. Even the wanded types, not quite as long lived, comfortably make it into their second century, some into their third. Unfortunately, we Wizards still age, albeit a bit more slowly. Ebenzar, for instance, looks like an active old guy in his sixties at the age of three hundred or so. The only exceptions I could think of were Doctor Strange, who was supposed to have looked about forty since the early seventeenth century, and possibly Wanda.

Even though I didn't know what kind of power she was using, I could feel it against my magical senses, humming like a nuclear reactor (and for all I knew, she could, somehow, be wielding nuclear power). I could make a fair guess that it was very, very powerful and about as dangerous.

With that in mind, I took a judicious step or two away from her and wondered what my part in the plan was. Following Wanda's order, I went to the doorway and drew my blasting rod, ready to pick off any N'Garai – though I was pretty sure that we'd got them all - and any Mindless Ones that wandered into view.

As it was, though, the Mabdhara seemed to be content with chowing down on the police horse it had nabbed. It was faintly nauseating and thoroughly disturbing – after all, with things going the way they were, it was entirely possible that a lot more of these things could be taking up residence on Earth. This could become a common sight.

Or, you know, common until the world was destroyed and consumed by a billion separate hell dimensions. Something along those lines.

"Unless you have a very good pair of sunglasses, you're not going to want to stand there," Wanda said, voice distant, as if she was concentrating very hard on something else. Which she kind of was.

"Do I want to know why?"

"Well, in approximately ninety seconds, a piece of space junk about the size of your car is going to hit the Mabdhara," she said, in that same distant voice. "And in my experience, there tends to be a bright flash on impact." After a moment, she added, "Oh, and you'll probably want to put your fingers in your ears."

Hells fucking _Bells_.

As I've mentioned, there were stories about Wanda. Being former Apprentice to the Sorcerer Supreme and now a fully-fledged badass in her own right meant that she was always going to attract them. Quite a few of them, as it happened. And some of them said that she could pretty much perform a miniature orbital bombardment, with pinpoint accuracy.

Until recently, I hadn't thought that this was even possible. Then a powerful Red Court Vampire called Don Paolo Ortega tried to cheat in a duel to the death between the two of us a couple of years back, and my old teacher responded by pulling a non-functioning Soviet satellite which we used to watch through the telescope on his farm – we'd even dubbed it 'Asteroid Dresden' – out of orbit and dropping it on Ortega's house, leaving behind a very large crater.

So, it was possible, but... well. Let's just say that my personal estimate of Wanda's power, already high, climbed sharply.

About a minute later, I saw a bright light appear in the night sky. It grew, faster and faster, until it was so bright that I had to narrow my eyes against the glow, and with it came a sound like a low flying fighter a jet, a powerful tearing roar, as if the air itself was being ripped apart.

The Mabdhara looked up and reared up on its hind legs.

I looked away and, following Wanda's advice, put my fingers in my ears.

There was a vast flash of light, visible even through my closed eyelids. A fraction of a second later came the sound of impact, less noise, more a shockwave that rocked the foundations of the building and threw me to the floor.

My ears ringing, I managed to push myself into a sitting position. I could see that the windows in the opposite building were smashed and the insistent wail of a thousand car alarms echoed through the streets outside. I looked over at Wanda, expecting her to be utterly exhausted by the vast expenditure of power.

Instead, she was getting to her feet and brushing herself down. She smiled at me, and offered me a hand up. Silently, probably staring at her in something approaching pure astonishment, I accepted, and got to my feet. She reached up and put her hands on my ringing ears, and murmured something. The ringing abruptly stopped.

"Better?" she asked, reaching up and pulling earplugs out of her own ears.

I nodded mutely.

She smiled and wiped her forehead clear of sweat, the only discernible sign of exertion on her face or, indeed, anywhere else.

Not that I was checking her out, you understand. I was just giving her a once over to make sure that she was okay.

"A little shell shocked?" she asked.

I nodded again. I kind of was. I mean... she'd just pulled something from _orbit_ and _dropped_ it on the Mabdhara's head. But that wasn't the most mind-blowing part. She'd made it look _easy_.

Leaving aside the sheer power required to pull something like that off, without a ritual or a magical artefact to help focus the energy, the calculations, the compensation for everything from the Earth's gravity to winds in the upper atmosphere to air pressure... it was improbable to say the least. I mean, Casaverde was, at least, a stationary target, and I'm pretty sure that Ebenezar had needed the observation logs to pick out Asteroid Dresden before he pulled it out of orbit, based on our phone conversation before the duel. Hell, if I hadn't just seen it – or more accurately, felt it – then I'd have thought that it was impossible.

And Wanda had barely broken a sweat.

Before I could dwell on this any further, I heard a loud, agonised sounding hiss. The Mabdhara was, astonishingly, still alive, at the bottom of a crater the size of a couple of swimming pools, spanning the intersection. But not, as it turned out, in very good shape. By the looks of things, it had absorbed most of the impact. It was missing one of its front limbs, and there was a large hole where at least half of its body should have been, with blood gushing everywhere. The rest of its body looked like someone had taken a hammer and a blow torch to it. This, in short, was a demon on its last legs.

It let out another hiss, and managed to drag itself to its feet, claws scraping through the growing puddle of muddy water. Well, sort of. It looked around, fury and terror mixing in its eyes, trying to identify what had laid it low. After a moment, it decided not to bother, and began hissing something in a strange, discordant language that made my ears hurt and the air around it ripple like a heat haze. Slowly, a portal began to open, and the stricken demon began to drag itself towards the escape route.

If it had made a break for it before Wanda's bombardment, I'd have let it go and called it a day, counting myself lucky that the demon had decided to cut and run.

But now... now, the tables were turned. The demon was on its last legs – literally – and I got the very definite sense that we could kill it, here and now. If it got away, on the other hand, it could come back some day, looking for revenge, and that was one rematch that I was not up for.

And what's more, it had caused the deaths of at least two dozen people. It _deserved_ to die.

So I switched my blasting rod for my staff and snapped, _"Disperdorus!"_

The disruption spell shot out the tip of my staff, a spiralling bolt of green energy which streaked across the battlefield and slammed into the portal, collapsing it.

The Mabdhara let a window rattling roar of frustration. But that roar was drowned by another.

Both I and the demon turned to see a low, wide black shape rocketing up the street. As it passed me, an orange flame ignited at the back, accelerating the shape into a blur, shooting over the lip of the crater at speeds that would make a Formula 1 driver feel inadequate.

If the Mabdhara had been human, it wouldn't even have had time to swear.

Bruce's jet powered tank hit it in what remained of its midsection at about half the speed of sound, piercing what remained of its chitinous armour and smashing it into the side of the crater with an almighty crashing crunch, pinning it like a butterfly to a cork.

The demon let out a horrible wail of agony and fear, lashing out at the vehicle. Even so badly injured, it was still viciously powerful, ripping into the metal of the tank's armour.

Bruce, however, was equal to it, and a powerful explosion simultaneously jolted the tank backwards, out of reach of the demon general's claws, and cut the creature in half. That was probably the missiles he'd been talking about.

The demon let out another horrible wail, even louder this time.

I wasn't an expert on this particular breed of demon, but I was pretty sure that it was dying. Of course, dying demons can stick around for a while and cause one hell of a lot of trouble if they aren't put down, so I strode towards the crater. Wanda, clearly thinking the same, fell into step beside me.

"Do we need anything special to kill this thing?" I asked.

"Not really," Wanda said. "It's in too much pain to concentrate. But it _will_ take a fair bit of firepower."

"I'll say," I said. While it wasn't in a particularly good state, this thing had taken some pretty powerful magic, a freaking orbital strike, been hit by a jet powered tank at ridiculous speeds and finally, what were probably some serious explosives, and it was still alive. Just about.

As we got close to the edge, I spotted a cable, sparks flying out of the tip, sticking out of the side, lying right in our path. Instantly, I stuck out an arm.

Unfortunately, I was internally budgeting for Thomas. Wanda is several inches shorter. So the arm went somewhere that it shouldn't. I felt smooth, rounded contours press against my forearm and hand. After a moment of comprehension, I realised where it was and yanked it away. "Sorry," I said awkwardly, glancing at Wanda. She had raised an eyebrow. "But look."

She followed my gaze to the cable and nodded. "Thanks for the warning," she said, eyes dancing with amusement. Had I imagined the slight emphasis she put on the word 'warning'?

I coughed, then nodded at the cable. "I've got an idea," I said. "If you can get Optimus Prime's grunge phase out of the big puddle."

Wanda snorted, then rolled her wrist. The huge black machine rose out of the muddy pool, before drifting onto the road and touching down as lightly as a feather.

"Nice."

"I try," Wanda said offhandedly. "And this idea of yours is...?"

"This," I said, hopping down into the crater and picking up the cable.

Instantly, raw, burning power surged into me, sending my muscles into a spasm. For a long, terrifying moment, I thought that I was going to die an excruciatingly painful and very embarrassing death. Then, with an effort of will, I managed to take control of the wild energy and direct it down my levelled staff, electricity pouring out the tip.

It didn't hit the Mabdhara.

Instead, it hit exactly what I was aiming for.

See, even redirecting a large proportion of Chicago's formidable electricity mains might not punch through this thing's formidable armour. I needed to get round it.

So I aimed at the water instead. The water in which the gaping wounds that Wanda's orbital bombardment and Bruce's explosive equipped battering ram had left behind dangled.

The demon let out a howl of pure agony, lighting up like a firework and thrashing in the pool, spraying water, mud and debris everywhere. I counted myself lucky to get away without a concussion, but my duster was going to need to some serious cleaning later.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the strain of redirecting the electricity became too much and I convulsively dropped the cable, leaving it spark and sputter by my feet. Feeling drained, I staggered, leaning on my staff and trying to ignore the smell of sizzling bacon.

"Is it down?" I asked.

"Looks down to me."

I glanced to one side to see Bruce hopping down into the crater. He had an impressed expression on his face, which faded slightly as he looked at me.

"You're going to yell at me now, aren't you?"

I had to admit that I was thinking about it. But ultimately, I shook my head. "No, Bruce," I said. "You did the right thing." I snorted. "And God knows I've done stupider for less reason."

"I did?" Bruce asked, surprised.

I nodded. "Besides," I added. "Between Alfred and your mom and dad, I think that the yelling thing should be well covered."

Bruce visibly wilted and I snickered.

"Harry?"

I looked up at the crater's edge and saw Thomas and Murph, both of whom looked relieved to see that I was alright.

"Oh look, it's the thing from the black lagoon," Thomas said. Relief is expressed in many ways.

"No," Wanda said absently. "He doesn't look anything like Alec."

"What?" I asked, puzzled.

"Long story," she said, wiping her face clean. "Though there's a lot of mud in it."

I winced. She was dripping with muddy water. "Sorry."

"I don't mind," she said. "It was rather impressive, actually. Ingenious improvisation."

"That death from above thing you pulled wasn't bad either," I said. "How did you do it? It wasn't magic."

Wanda smiled, eyes twinkling. "Well, a girl's got to have some secrets," she said playfully.

"What would it cost to learn them?" I asked.

Wanda's smile grew, then faltered.

"Wanda?"

She grimaced. "I've got two things I want to ask you, and I'm not sure which to ask first," she said.

My heart lurched.

"Well, maybe it could wait," I said.

"No," Wanda said. "I..." She sighed again. "Sod it. The other question can wait and I'm too old to dance around this like some kind of idiot schoolgirl." She wrapped her arms around me. "C'mere."

And with that, she pulled me down into a passionate kiss. For a moment, I was too stunned to do anything, then I leaned into the kiss, slipping my arms around her back and pulling her close, feeling the contours of her body mould themselves to my own. Everything faded away; the wet, the cold, the gritty mud, even the vague smell of scorched bacon – which, all things considered, was almost certainly coming from me – all of it simply became unimportant.

In the background, I vaguely heard Bruce whooping and Thomas letting out an ear splitting wolf-whistle.

Eventually, the two of us surfaced for air. "If the other question was anything like that one," I managed. "Then please give me a moment to catch my breath before you ask it."

Wanda laughed, a wide smile spread across her face. She wasn't the only one. I could feel myself grinning.

"And me without my camera."

I turned to see Murph, standing to one side, an impish twinkle in her eyes.

"The guys won't believe it otherwise," she continued.

"I don't think that'll be a problem," Bruce said, waving a radio and grinning a grin that wouldn't have looked out of place on the face of the Cheshire Cat.

I looked up at the crater and sighed. It was lined with cheering, jeering cops. I was never, ever, going to hear the end of this.

"Not _all_ of them are teasing you, you know," Murph said. "You two," she said, then paused. "You four," she corrected, looking at Thomas and Bruce, both of whom preened slightly. "Helped save thousands of lives."

"We did?" I asked, surprised. I hadn't really thought about that.

Murph snorted. "Yes, you did, you enormous dork," she said. "Or did you think there wouldn't be any casualties from the Godzilla wannabe's rampage?"

"Not mention the little ones," Thomas said. "Those things were like Red Court crossed with velociraptors."

"Fast, strong and disgusting," Wanda commented. "Yeah, I can see that comparison working."

Murph's smile faded. "Yeah," she said.

The pile of chewed bones and the dead cops swam to the top of my mind and I reached out, gently squeezing her shoulder. She nodded and at Wanda's questioning look said, "I lost five of my guys. A couple of the N'Garai got through."

As she said that, I felt Wanda's hand brush against my own. I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye, then took it.

This did not go unnoticed.

"I'm sorry," Wanda said quietly.

Thomas said nothing, but bowed his head.

Murph shrugged. "It's part of the job," she said, in tones that strongly suggested that she wished it was otherwise.

There was silence.

"So," Thomas said, tone mischievous, clearly looking to lighten the mood – probably at my expense. "Tell me, Harry. Does this mean that I have to buy earplugs on the way back, or do I have time to get them with the grocery run tomorrow?"

I glowered at him and opened my mouth to say something snappy. Wanda, however, forestalled me by simply reaching into her pocket and pulling out a small box. She lobbed it to Thomas. "Knock yourself out," she said calmly.

I gave her a wide eyed look.

"You won't be needing them yet," she added, then gave me a sly glance out of the corner of her eye. "But in the not too distant future... who knows?"

Thomas stared at her for a long moment, then smiled. "Wanda," he said, a note of genuine respect in his voice. "I think that this is going to be the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

"I think it might just be," Wanda said.

"Wow," Bruce said. "Boss, you are screwed." He paused. "Or, you know, will be. Soon."

"More than can be said for you, kid," I retorted.

"Ooh, _burn_ ," Murph said as Wanda started laughing.

"Hey, at least I'm not the one with smoking hair," Bruce said, nodding at me.

I blinked and glanced up. I couldn't see anything.

"It _is_ a little scorched, Harry," Wanda said.

"And you're covered in mud and smell like overdone bacon," Thomas added helpfully. "Yet you still managed to get a girlfriend. I'm impressed."

I glared at him. "Come on," I said. "Let's go." I glanced at the remains of the demon. "The scenery isn't likely to improve."

"Indeed not," Wanda said, and the two of us, followed by the others, climbed out. As we did, I noticed her snap her fingers.

Almost instantly, Thomas let out a yelp, and fell flat on his face. His pants had fallen down, pooling around his ankles, neatly tripping him up, drawing a loud 'WAHEY!' from the crowd of cops. Thomas, for his part, pulled up his pants while swearing loudly, and gave Wanda a dirty look. She smiled sweetly, and he sighed ruefully.

"You have no idea how many times I've wanted to do that," I said, once I managed to stop laughing. I wasn't referring to that specifically; just a general desire to get one over my half-brother, but Wanda took it as such.

"Maybe I could teach you," she said.

"Huh?"

"The other thing I was going to ask you was if you wanted to be my apprentice," Wanda said.

I stared at her, wide eyed. "M-m-me?" I stammered. Suave and eloquent, that's me.

"Stephen, Doctor Strange, reckons he might not be Sorcerer Supreme for long, and he asked me to take an apprentice," Wanda said. "I don't have time to train someone up from the beginning and, well, you tick every box: quite young, smart, powerful, clever, thinks outside the box and you're a good person." She smiled slightly. "Though I wasn't expecting to, well..."

"Be attracted to me?" I asked.

"To be frank? No," Wanda said. "It wasn't that I thought there was going to be anything wrong with you, it was just..." She chewed her lip. "I haven't dated anyone for a while. So, aside from the occasional bit of frustration, it hasn't really come to mind, if you follow me."

I nodded slowly, taking it in. This... well, it was an honour, to put it mildly. But it also complicated things.

Master/Apprentice relationships are frequent, indeed in some cases preferred because teaching and learning magic is an intimate process. Some actually prefer it, due to the risks that dating carried when you were a Wizard, i.e. some monster or other playing the honey trap game. It's depressingly common, which is unsurprising, really.

Humans, magical or otherwise, crave intimacy. A desire to be touched is written into our very biology. And I'm not just talking about sex. Babies that aren't held during their first year have been proven to have severely stunted emotional and mental development. To touch and be touched by someone you care about is a fundamental desire, a need. It's very easy for someone or something to play on that, and supernatural predators have never been overly inclined to make things difficult for themselves.

But I wasn't entirely sure if... well. It would be odd going from treating Wanda like my girlfriend and equal to my teacher and superior. And then there was the matter of having a fight or worse, breaking up.

I voiced these doubts to Wanda, who looked pensive.

"You've got a point," she said. "And we haven't exactly known each other for long. And the two things don't have to come as one. If you just want to date and not be my apprentice – remember, it is just an offer, then that's fine. But..." She stopped, turned and looked at me. "I reckon that we can work around it. We start slow and work our way up. If and when there are problems, we take them as they come. But, at the same time, it takes two to tango." She gave me a look. It combined hope and a fear of rejection tempered by realism and resignation. "So. What do you say?"

I thought about it for a long moment. "On the apprentice thing, well... I'd love to learn, but I've got a job and an apprentice of my own," I said slowly. "So I'm not sure how much time I'd have to spare."

"I'm flexible," Wanda said.

My mind went somewhere very dirty, and it must have shown on my face, because she grinned a grin so wicked that I half expected to see Lucifer taking notes in the background.

"In more than one sense of the word," she added, then sobered. "But I can work a timetable." She smiled wryly. "Honestly, this would be the first time I've been on this end of the whole apprentice thing. The closest I've got is teaching a few kids new to their power the basics of control."

"Same," I said, then nodded. "Okay." I paused. "Would being your apprentice mean that there'd be some blowback onto my friends, you know, from things like that?" I gestured at the ex-demon in the crater.

Wanda was silent for a moment. "I'd like to say no," she said. "But, honestly? What I do, what you would be doing, is very dangerous. It comes with a lot of enemies and makes a lot more."

"Enemies," I muttered. "Don't have any shortage of those." I frowned slightly in thought. Timing wise, we could probably make it work. If I had my guess right, what Wanda would be teaching me would be building on and refining the skills I had already – particularly the latter. The deftness Wanda showed in her spell work compared to mine was like comparing the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel to a toddler's first finger painting.

There'd be a fair few new things to learn, but I'd already have my fairly extensive (for my age, at least) background knowledge to work from. Plus, teaching Bruce magical theory had helped me explore it better, understanding it much more than when I'd originally learnt it.

And leaving all else aside, I loved the Art. Not simply what I could do with it, like finding people or blowing things up, but exploring its limits, learning its intricacies and trying to understand it better. Every little crumb of knowledge was, to me at least, more valuable than gold.

I met Wanda's gaze. "Yes," I said. "But on one condition."

She didn't seem surprised. "A Soulgaze," she said, and nodded, murmuring under her breath for a moment. Her eyes seemed to flash for a moment, then returned to their normal grass green. "All right."

I looked into her eyes and, after a long moment, fell into them.

Wanda's mindscape was dark, lit by a dark red glow. I looked around for a moment, seeing nothing, then spotted Wanda herself. It was darker behind her than before her and she looked smaller than in real life, younger and less certain. She looked exhausted and was covered in cuts and bruises. Yet, at the same time, she was straight backed and there was a defiant look in her eyes.

She was slowly making her way through the dim path, following a dancing light. I looked at it, trying to get some sense of what was emitting that light, but try as I might, I could only get a sense of a pairing of glowing white eyes, a dark red swirling cloak and a smile like the Cheshire Cat.

Then, I heard a child start crying in the darkness behind her. No, not one child, I realised, but two. I saw Wanda's mind-self look behind her, a look of agonised consternation on her face. Then she closed her eyes and strode onwards, determined, but bitter.

In the darkness behind her, I saw shapes, some strange and inhuman, some recognisably humanoid and others... others that defied description. As I looked into it, I saw two resolve themselves out of the darkness, followed by a constant stream of indistinct whispers.

One was a man in his prime, tall and well built, in black and grey armour with a dark cape swirling out behind him. His face was hidden behind a helmet, but I could see grey hair and the wild eyes of a fanatic. He positively radiated power; power, authority and madness.

The other was Wanda herself, more like she looked now. But it was only a superficial resemblance. She was dressed in a long crimson off the shoulder red dress, a solid block of colour only broken up by a golden t-shape on which was inscribed a series of ancient and incomprehensible symbols. It seemed to shift and warp under my gaze, never staying as one thing for more than a moment, always shifting and always changing. Her hair floated around her head like a wavy halo, surrounded by a nimbus of crackling crimson-white energy, with more dancing around her hands.

If the other figure radiated power, then this version of Wanda radiated Power with a capital P.

And that Power... it was _wrong_.

But that wasn't the scary part.

The scary part was her expression.

It was utterly devoid of hope or any other positive emotion. There was only a kind of hollow grief, bitterness and above all, despair. It was the expression of someone who had lost everything, absolutely everything, someone who had no one to turn to, nothing to hope for, and had therefore just... snapped.

The pair of them hung just behind the main Wanda, who knew they were there. She stumbled, falling to the ground, and they two figures swooped closer. Almost instantly, though, she got to her feet and kept going down that lonely, empty path.

Then, the Soulgaze ended, and I fell back into my body. As I regained my bearings, I noticed Wanda looking at me with a kind of sad compassion.

That was new. Most people who get a good look at my soul tend to be unnerved at best. One ended up screaming about hell. I can only think of three who haven't: Thomas, Susan Rodriguez and Johnny Marcone. Wanda made four.

One of the previous three was my brother and had encountered a copy of our mother's consciousness in my head (like I said earlier, long story), another had become the woman that I had loved and lost, one never liable to be intimidated by anything, and the third... well. Gentleman Johnny Marcone had not become the kingpin of Chicago's crime and stayed that way by being easily rattled. While Wanda had likely seen far more horrors than even my head could generate, I had to wonder what she'd seen to inspire that expression.

"So," she said. "Yes?"

I leaned in and kissed her. "Yes," I said.

Wanda's smile could have lit up a city block.

"He saw sense, then? He didn't pull the misguided nobility thing on you?"

We both turned to see Murph, wearing a small smile. By the looks of things, she'd either overheard our conversation or guessed at it.

"He did see sense," Wanda said, then added wryly, "Whether it was _good_ sense, however..."

Murph shrugged. "There's only one way to find out," she said casually. "Oh, and by the way, he may be annoying sometimes, but he's my friend. So if you hurt him, superpowers or no superpowers, I will break you."

"Murph," I yelped.

"No, it's okay," Wanda said, nodding. "Understood, Karrin."

Murph nodded. "Then we're good," she said. After that, she turned and grimaced at the crater and dead demon. "That's not going to be a fun one to explain to city government."

"I've got it," Wanda said casually, rolling her wrist and murmuring, " _Reparo._ "

I stared in disbelief as the damage to the street repair itself, the crater disappearing like a dent in a Coke can.

I wasn't the only who was astonished, as Murph's jaw dropped and a number of loud swear words came from the cops who'd been covering the perimeter.

The demon corpse remained, and Wanda glanced at Murph. "Do you need the body for anything, Karrin?" she asked.

"No," Murph said faintly. Then, she shook her head. "Actually, we'll need to document it. And SHIELD might want to look at it."

"They usually do," Wanda observed, and nodded. "If you want it got rid of, ring me. You've got my cell number."

I blinked at her. "You can..."

"Use modern technology?" Wanda asked, then nodded.

"How?" I asked, befuddled. The thing about using magic is that it tends to screw with any technology more recent than World War II. Bruce figured out a solution – apparently he adapted EMP hardening technology to counter magical interference – and so have SHIELD.

But Bruce is frighteningly clever, knows magical theory extremely well, is pretty sharp on technology too and has the resources of Wayne Enterprises behind him. Even so, the method is fairly clunky. Plus, SHIELD is pretty much the most powerful organisation on the planet with entire buildings full of mad scientists working for them, churning out technology that looks like it escaped from a _Star Wars_ film. Or at least, that's how I figure they do it.

But Wanda was implying that she didn't have to use any of these technological workarounds, and that was the really attention grabbing thing.

With a great deal of effort, I could work a suppression spell that basically suppressed my magic and the effect it has on technology. For reasons why this is a bad idea in the long term, medium term or anything other than a very short term, take a can of coke and shake it really hard. Open it. Once you've cleaned off the coke, imagine the same thing, but with the amount of coke constantly growing, while the effort of containment slowly weakens that very containment over time (because everyone gets tired eventually and concentrating on a very demanding spell is only going to accelerate that process). Oh, and imagine that that coke has the explosive properties of nitro-glycerine. Even more explosive and even messier. I'd looked into it and decided that it simply didn't work, so generally opted for getting old, rugged technology and bearing its many failures with good grace. Besides: I was used to candles.

Clearly, however, Wanda had managed it, and I would be lying if I didn't say that I wasn't curious about how.

"I can teach you how to do that, too," she said.

I nodded slowly. "I'd like that," I said. I don't feel an urgent need to get the latest in modern technology, but it would be nice to be able to, say, do my taxes with the aid of something more advanced than a freaking abacus. "That thing with the street, that was a wanded spell, wasn't it?"

Wanda nodded.

"I thought that you couldn't..."

"Do wanded spells if you were wandless and vice versa?"

I nodded.

"You can," Wanda said. "It's just difficult, at first, but easy once you get the hang of it. My godson is being taught wandless magic by his Uncle, and so are some of his friends." She hesitated for just a moment as she said friends. "After all," she continued. "If you think about it, both wanded and wandless magic wielders get their power from the same place. You just need to be trained out of your natural inclinations."

"Sounds like martial arts," Murph commented.

"There's a fair bit of crossover," Wanda acknowledged. She and Murph exchanged a speaking look, and Murph nodded slightly.

"Thomas is helping Bruce take his tank back, by the way," she said. "It's still running, somehow or other."

"Oh, cool," I said.

Wanda looked up at me. "You've probably got a lot of questions," she said.

That was putting it lightly. "Yeah," I said.

"I'll answer as many as I can. Now, if you like. Over a drink." She coughed slightly. "I don't know about you, but I'm parched."

I'm dense, but I'm not _that_ dense.

I smiled. "I'd like that," I said. A cool drink with, dare I say it, my new girlfriend – and teacher – sounded great as first dates went.

I haven't always had the easiest run in life, and the world is getting darker every day, making bright moments all the scarcer and to be enjoyed that much more.

So we did.


End file.
